None the Wiser
by The Uke Reformation
Summary: There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...NaruSasuNaru.
1. Not a Fish

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching... SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: ****R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** This sort of came to me of it's own accord. Hopefully I will be able to retain my muse. -bites tongue- Hopefully. I make no guarantees, except that this will end quite shortly if I get no reviews.

**Note:** Yaoi. If you don't like it, don't read it. Pure and simple. Flames are a waste of both your time and mine. -bows- Thankyou for your consideration.

**Disclaimer:****Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2005. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_by The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Prologue**

**"Stick my head underwater**

**and you'll know I'm not a fish."**

Uzumaki Naruto hated preparations. Just in general, he liked to have things jump out and surprise him, rather than be predictable. People were predictable. And he didn't much care for most people, nor did they care much for him, which was as predictable and boring as anything possibly could be.

He just hated being prepared. He liked the feeling of being caught unawares. Iruka-sensei had always said he was good on his feet. It's one of the things that made him such a good educator. Kids could actually throw real questions at him that _weren't_ just text book humor and he'd actually know the answer, and be able to show it to them in a way they understood. It was one of the things that made him so popular among his students, although his parents were always predictable sticklers who bristled in his presence. He liked kids their age. They were at their peak of unpredictability in his class. And he knew it. And he liked it. He liked it quite a bit.

He was constantly late. He never attended meetings. He gave assignments sporadically, and almost never used the text books that were issued him, always telling his kids that it was probably worth something in Taiwan, but nothing to him. He showed movies often. He barely covered all of the state standards, but always taught his pupils more than they had ever learned in school since they were in kindergarten. He was loud. He was constantly in motion. He knew things about most of his fellow teachers than their _spouses_ ever would. He left every direct communication line available to him open to his students. Telephone, e-mail, pager, even instant messaging.

He had dedicated his life to them. It kept him busy. Happy. Unpredictable. And hard to find. It was a good life. A fast-paced, drama-filled life that consisted of his ninth grade history classes and nothing else. He made time for no one but them. They were the only thing that was important. Relationships didn't matter. (Who did he have to relate to, anyway?) An alternative social life was of no consequence. His only desire was to make sure his students were happy. Sometimes they transformed from students into lifetime friends and associates.

There were no dreams of a house. Of a family. Of another person to make him feel more complete. He had never felt complete, in the first place. So he wasn't going to depend on any one else to help him feel it, then take it away again. That was so predictable. No. He was happy, missing meetings, tutoring on the weekends, coming in early and still being late to hall duty. He was glad to do it. He was more than content to live this life, in a small apartment that counted as less of a home to him then his linoleum-tile classroom on the ground floor of Konohagakure High School.

So long as he could avoid the Ghosts, he figured he would be alright. And he was safe, anyway. They wouldn't find him ever again. And he would never, ever, be forced to go through all that a second time.

But there were some things that nothing could prepare you for, and being caught off your guard was nearly as bad as being warned previously. There were some things that were too much for any amount of people in one situation to handle. Sad as it was, it was a fact of life. A scary, completely unpredictable, wildly untamed and savage one that drew Uzumaki Naruto in like nothing else.

Uchiha Sasuke definitely fit into that category.

* * *

**The-Scarecrow signed on at 11:33:05 PM.**

**BANGUZUMAKI signed on at 11:35:22 PM.**

**The-Scarecrow:** You're on late.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** could sy the same for u

**The-Scarecrow:** Insomnia again?

**BANGUZUMAKI:** exitemnt mor like

**The-Scarecrow:** You always were a bouncy one.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** nd u were alwys lazy nd annoying

**The-Scarecrow:** So hostile.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** o shut up

**The-Scarecrow:** I never said bounciness was a bad thing.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** pervert

**The-Scarecrow:** Your accusations burn me through.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** my apologes

**The-Scarecrow:** apologies

**BANGUZUMAKI:** w/e

**The-Scarecrow: **You really are excited, aren't you?

**BANGUZUMAKI:** yup

**The-Scarecrow:** You'd better get some sleep then.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** D:

**BANGUZUMAKI:** cmon

**BANGUZUMAKI:** just a littl latr

**The-Scarecrow:** Fine, fine.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

**The-Scarecrow:** What're you looking forward to most?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** my room

**BANGUZUMAKI:** imiss it

**The-Scarecrow:** Seen any of your students lately?

**BANGUZUMAKI:** lee nd tenten came by teh other day

**The-Scarecrow:** And Neji?

**BANGUZUMAKI:** keeping his distance heh

**BANGUZUMAKI:** what about u

**The-Scarecrow:** You know I never get as attached as you.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** yeah

**The-Scarecrow:** I met with Lee and TenTen as well, actually.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** really

**The-Scarecrow:** Would I lie to you?

**BANGUZUMAKI:** yes

**The-Scarecrow:** Hm...I suppose I would.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** i miss em

**The-Scarecrow:** An excellent pair of students.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** wonder if we'll get n e like em this yr

**The-Scarecrow:** You never know.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** did u go tu registratin

**The-Scarecrow:** registration; And the answer is yes.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** wut do u think

**The-Scarecrow:** I think it looks promising.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** heh

**BANGUZUMAKI:** good

**The-Scarecrow:** Have you eaten dinner yet?

**BANGUZUMAKI:** yea

**The-Scarecrow:** Ramen, I suppose?

**BANGUZUMAKI:** best sutff in the wrld

**BANGUZUMAKI:** stuff

**The-Scarecrow:** You'll give yourself cancer.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** will not thats only maruchan

**The-Scarecrow:** Not true. Most, if not all microwaveable ramen causes cancer.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** dont care n e ways

**BANGUZUMAKI:** i like it

**The-Scarecrow:** Obviously. Any fruit?

**BANGUZUMAKI:** no

**BANGUZUMAKI:** ill go get sum

**BANGUZUMAKI:** brb

**BANGUZUMAKI is away at 11:45:57 PM.**

**BANGUZUMAKI returned at 12:00:37 AM.**

**The-Scarecrow: **What did you get?

**BANGUZUMAKI:** think im gunna go tu bed

**BANGUZUMAKI:** sum grapes

**The-Scarecrow:** Good. To bed with you then.

**BANGUZUMAKI:** kay

**BANGUZUMAKI:** nite

**The-Scarecrow:** Oyasuminasai.

**BANGUZUMAKI signed off at 12:01:04 AM.**

* * *

**End of Prologue**

I'm real sorry you guys. It was more of a teasing whore than anything else. I tried to stretch it out, but I didn't want to go too overboard with it and majorly screw something over. (I have a tendency to do that.) Not quite sure what's up with that chapter title either -makes a weird look- but I'll probably keep doing that, whether I understand it or not...

Just review and I will get the next chapter up as soon as possible.

--_Lady Lamb_


	2. First Impressions

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching... SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** I apologize to all that found the prologue confusing. Ah, well. It was meant to be as such. Everything will be explained eventually. Just refer back to it every once in a while, as we go onward. I thank my reviewers, and will consider taking up a beta if the offer still stands. Also, go to my profile if you wish to know more about the fic without having to wait for every new update.

**Note:** Yaoi. Yama nashi. Ochi nashi. Imi nashi. Nothing you can do. I shall write what I shall write. If you don't like that kind of thing, don't read that kind of thing. Oh, the simplicity.

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2005. All rights reserved.  
**

* * *

None the Wiser

_by The Uke Reformation  
_

* * *

**Chapter 1**

**"First days mean free**

**first impressions."**

There was something about first days, Naruto thought, half-waltzing around the bus lane of the parking lot. He had always liked first days. They had always been inviting, to him. A new start. A clean slate. They were a breath of fresh air after you had been swimming too deep for too long in muddy water. He wasn't quite sure why they felt that way to him, but they always had and that wasn't about to change now. He grinned in the early, late August morning.

There was just _something_ about first days.

He heard Iruka practically scream at him from the corner as the first of a long line of buses rolled into the street, and he giggled. _Giggled_. Well, everybody better get a good look now if they ever wanted to see it ever again. He spun himself back onto the sidewalk, still laughing, Iruka's scolding voice in his ears. He spun a little more, listening to the dolphin chide a little more fiercely with the knowledge that he was being ignored.

"Naruto, I'm serious, don't goof off in the street, the buses are here! You could get run over!"

Yessiree, there was just something about that tone of voice at this time of the morning that he just could _not_ get enough of. Any other day, it would be wearing and irritate him to no end that his associate was so damn maternal. But today, he couldn't have minded it less. It simply made him grin more and spin even faster. The world was running together into little blurs, spins and blotches that made him giggle even more. He could here Iruka getting more flustered.

"Naruto, are you listening to me!"

He was listening. He was listening as the buses came into the parking lot. He was listening to the ear-splitting shriek of rocks against other rocks against rubber as the tires turned in one, by one, by one. He was listening to the children with their windows rolled down. He was listening to them holler at one another, and talk amongst themselves, and ignore the driver. He was listening to the magical little click as the shuttered doors swung back to let people out. And he was definitely listening to the stares he was receiving.

"Hey...who is that...?"

"Isn't that a teacher?"

"What the hell is he doing?"

"What an odd person..."

Naruto giggled a little more as the students, a large group of around thirty (most of them first-years), began to file out of the buses still looking at him strangely and muttering, and he finally decided he was tired of spinning. He completed a last little twirl, catching himself before he tripped or stumbled, and opened his eyes again, the world whirling around him for a few minutes before his vision untilted itself. He laughed a bit more openly, breathing in the fresh morning air before shouting out his welcome.

"**GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY!**"

He heard nervous little titters from the girls that scooted away from them. One, a short, blushing little thing with purple hair and crystal eyes waved thinly. He grinned at her and noticed that her blush deepened ten-fold. It made him laugh, in a cheery sort of way. He was even happier when he heard a few tentative "hi"s back in his direction, and spun around when a knuckle rapped his arm sharply.

"It's far too early for anybody to be that loud, _sensei_."

Naruto face lit up in a smirk. "Great to see you too, Neji."

The sophomore nearly surpassed him in height, coming up to his temples at least, with his dark hair that hung to his sharp, thin hips. His skin was pale, almost as pale as his near-translucent blue eyes, and his legs were long and shapely. He was donned, as were the rest of his peers, in the dark, black and gray school uniforms, but for some reason, Naruto noticed, he had a way of making the dark pants and button-up jacket look _much_ better.

His former student shrugged, looking impassive. Naruto laughed a little more (something he enjoyed doing) and jerked a thumb after the girl who had been blushing before. "That couldn't have been your little cousin, now could it have been? Hinata, who I met at the barbeque last year?"

Neji's expression seemed to darken momentarily, and Naruto knew he had stumbled into rocky territory, as was so easily done with the Hyuuga, it seemed. Family stuff always made the boy turn...icky. He had momentarily forgotten.

However, Neji seemed to, again, shrug it off, after a minute. "I suppose."

Naruto chuckled, trying to find a way to change the subject before things went sour. "So...I didn't get to see you over the holiday." The two of them were walking together towards the steps into the school building, towed along by the large crowd now exiting the buses. "You been avoiding me?"

"Perhaps," Neji said, staring off for a minute before turning back to him. "Why?"

"Oh, just wondered what you were doing with yourself," Naruto grinned down at him. "I got visits from both TenTen and Lee. And, you know me; I just tend to worry if you aren't there with them. Those two won't just keep themselves in line, you know."

Neji's expression remained stoic as he shrugged again, the two of them starting on the stairs. "I was relatively busy. College scouting, studying...the like."

_'Meaning you took it upon yourself to work as hard as you could to afford more than just the rent those three months so that you could afford gas to go driving all over in a borrowed car looking at all the highest and most refined colleges in the country,'_ Naruto thought, looking the boy over. From any other standpoint no one would be able to tell the difference. But to Naruto, who had taught Hyuuga Neji for all of last year, it was clearly visible. He was exhausted.

He reached out to touch Neji's shoulder lightly. "Take care of yourself, alright?" His face held a concerned look as they reached the top of the stairs.

Neji stared back up at him as they paused for a moment, people around them jostling by without care, except for glancing at the teacher who had yelled so boisterously, earlier, and the gorgeous boy he now seemed to be counseling with a quite serious air. Finally, the Hyuuga nodded and Naruto took this as a good sign, releasing the student's shoulder with a small nod of his own.

Entering the hall, still by Neji's side, Naruto spotted yet another he'd wanted to hear from over the summer, but had not yet had a chance to interrogate. He put out his hand, waving energetically above the crowd with another of his long-distance yells that should most certainly not be used in the hallways of a private high school.

"**OI! CATEPILLAR-BROW!**" He added a third line upon spotting who the teacher was speaking with, grinning. "**DOG-BROW!**"

Maito Gai looked up from speaking animatedly with his favorite student, greeting Naruto with the same loud, voluminous tones as he had been addressed.

"**NARUTO-KUN!****I GREET YOU UPON THIS FINE MORNING! I, KONOHA'S SPROUTING LEAF OF ACCEPTANCE--**" (here he paused to make a ridiculous pose that he no doubt thought amazingly cool) "--**WELCOME YOU TO YET ANOTHER OF OUR SCHOOL'S YEARS OF REPETITIVE EXCELLENCE! MAY OUR GREATNESS NEVER FADE!**"

He put both of his thumbs up as Naruto strode over to him, Neji following only out of conditioned politeness, smiling broadly as his creepily prefect teeth flashed in the lighting. At his side, Rock Lee started off as well.

"**AND I, KONOHA'S BLUE BEAST, GREET YOU, NARUTO-SENSEI, AS I DO THE COMING OF THE SUNRISE OF THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR! GOOD MORNING TO YOU!**"

He posed as well, in a way that would've made anyone stare (as it did many of the freshman who were not so used to the antics of the two as was the rest of the student body who passed as if nothing was happening). Naruto ignored it as he had been doing for a good few years now.

"Morning Lee, Gai. How're you two doing?"

"**NOTHING BUT WELL, SENSEI!**" Lee said, straightening his back and saluting.

"**AS WELL AS THE YOUNG BUCK THAT PRANCES INTO THE DAWN, NARUTO-KUN!**" Gai did a double of his infamous "nice guy" pose, teeth still sparkling.

Naruto chuckled, giving in to the relative hilarity that they both thought they looked entirely serious doing all of this. Neji, who had the emotional capacity of a brick on most occasions, seemed to have regained his brooding quality and stood quite still, staring unblinking at the two he could often be found naming as his associates.

"See anybody you like so far, Gai?" Naruto said, after stifling himself for the time being.

"Do I not like **everyone**, Naruto-kun?" Gai said, valiantly defending the whole of the student body from it's resident hyper-active cynic.

"Anyone of Lee's caliber?"

"**HEAVEN'S NO!**" Gai puffed out his chest with pride. "**LEE IS BUT THE BEST STUDENT A MAN COULD HAVE!**"

Huge, melodramatic tears streamed down Lee's face. "OH, GAI-SENSEI!"

"You're going to be late to class, Naruto."

A man about a head taller than Naruto, silver-headed with a dark mask that covered half his face, a starched suit and an orange book of undoubtable perverted intentions had appeared out of nowhere. Bandages were slung, lazy and thick, over his left eye. Naruto blinked up at him, noticing that Neji was gone from the corridor.

"Oi, Kakashi, 'sup?"

Hatake Kakashi's visible eye glittered in a knowing way.

"Not your 'on-time' percentage, obviously." He held out his left wrist, where a digital clock blinked.

Naruto swore loudly. "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! IT'S THAT LATE!"

Kakashi sighed and plodded slowly back the hall. "Thirty-four seconds and counting, Naruto."

Gai, gripped Lee in a tight hug and sent the boy on his way, moving back into his classroom and shutting the door behind him with a grin and a "good luck!" in Naruto's direction. The hall was almost completely empty. Naruto stomped the ground hard, and swore again.

His room was half-way across the campus.

* * *

Naruto skidded on the tile just outside Room 201, scrabbling frantically in an attempt to retain both his balance and his speed, and just barely succeeding. The soles of his leather shoes had made their first black marks of the school year on the linoleum floor. The laces of one had loosened, one almost flying free. The bell had rung nearly three minutes ago. He swore again, sprinting the length of the hall and catching himself on the handle of his own door at long last.

He swung it, the door banging shut behind him, putting out one of his feet and coming to a screeching halt. He collapsed from the chest down, supporting himself by smacking both hands down upon his knees. He breathed hard, sweating slightly as he panted, taking a few moments to collect himself, finally standing back up once he had recovered and looking around.

Any quiet chatter that had been humming to itself before his explosive arrival had ceased. Students stared back at him, wide-eyed and frozen. A chubby kid in the third row had gone stock still halfway through lifting a potato chip to his mouth.

Naruto was about to start up about it just as a cylindrical metal object flew out of nowhere, connecting with his skull. He fell back with an automatic outcry, hitting the ground with a thud.

"YOU'RE LATE!" and a pointing, accusatory finger were the only antidotes he was offered by a pink-haired girl who stood at the opposite end of the room, a hand on her hip.

Naruto groaned, holding his head for a minute before he dared to glance at the can that had just felled him. Beets. He groaned again.

"Aw, c'mon Sakura-chan, not on the _first day_…"

The girl came forward, folding her arms across her somewhat insubstantial chest. Her green eyes gleamed eerily in the fluorescent lighting as she glowered down at him, expecting something.

He sighed, accommodating her. "I'm sorry, Sakura-chan. I forgot what day it was so I overslept, and then I got caught up in traffic halfway here because—"

"LIAR!"

Naruto chuckled and picked up the can of beets as he stood again, rubbing his head in an innocent fashion. "Well, my first 'beeting' of the school year. Can't say I'm glad…I figured he'd at_least_ give me a week of preparation beforehand…"

"Me too," Sakura sighed, the corners of her mouthing slightly upturned in a guilty, knowing smile. "That was the worst excuse I've heard out of you. As if you'd ever forget the first day." She excluded the insignificant fact that Naruto had never owned a car. For that, he forgave her almost completely.

He had always been one to overact, however. "Oh, c'mon! You'd just beaned me with a can of beets! Who's supposed to think logically after something like that!"

"You seemed to manage it last year!"

Naruto sighed. Okay, now she had a point.

He decided to drop it and nodded to the rosey bangs that feathered down nicely around her soft cheeks. "You tapered it. Looks nicer."

She smiled widely, flushing slightly at the attention and fingering it in what seemed both a fond and bashful way. "Thanks! Ino did it for me…you really like it?"

"Yeah," Naruto said with a grin. Ino had rubbed him the wrong way at the beginning of last year. But as it came out that she wanted to be both a cosmetologist and inherit her parent's flower shop, things he thought were honorable dreams to have, they had started to get along better. That in itself had helped him achieve a better relationship with Sakura, seeing as the two were best friends.

However, he stopped in his affectionate nostalgia and remembrance of last year for a second as he thought of something abruptly. He handed the can back to her. "Why aren't you in class, anyway?"

"I've got Iruka first period. He sent me. Says I'm to 'beet' you everyday until you get her on _time_."

Naruto caught himself _just _before keeling over. "Oh, how _convenient_."

Sakura gave him a sympathetic look. "Should I aim for your stomach next time?"

Naruto nodded with yet another sigh. "Please. And, as it were, your work here is done. Back to class with you."

Sakura giggled and moved around him. She called "have a good morning, Naruto!" over her shoulder. And then she was gone.

The blonde school teacher watched her go before reaching to rub his head. What a day to forget the Advil. Ah, well. He'd cope for the time being.

Naruto turned to his class, who stared back perplexedly. He sighed for somewhere around the umpteenth time. "I'll tell you one thing," he finally said to the silence, "I need to get in better shape. I used to be able to shoot that first hall in less than twenty seconds. Geez, I'm a disgrace." Nobody spoke and he decided it was about time he got on with it. "Anyway!" He brought his hands together quite loudly, his students seeming to start out of a daze. "Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"

"Alright-y, today is your first day as students of Konohagakure Academy. Welcome. Anybody for whom this is not true and are here for a second time—" he paused to look around suspiciously "—I have no desire to hear about it. Kapish? Kapish. If you want reasons for that…? I dunno. In my experience, I've found that your guys' _excuses_ for that really boring. And personally, I don't like being bored any more than you do.

"I'm not going to list out a bunch of stupid 'class rules' because, in my experience, you guys never follow them. In fact, _because_ they're rules you tend to deliberately _dis_obey them. So listen, I'm only going to make you follow one rule, and that's the golden one. Why? Because it's shiny, and I like shiny things. Just treat me like you want me to treat you. Treat your _classmates_ the way you want them to treat you. Because, trust me, you gotta stick with these people **all year**. They can make your life miserable. **I** can make your life miserable. Don't mess with that. Just be nice and things'll go very well for you."

The students watched him with blank faces. 'Ooh, tough crowd. Fun.' He spotted Neji's cousin blushing faintly in the back of the room and smiled to himself. 'Fun, fun, fun.'

"Kay. Now that _that's_ out of the way, we can get started, hm?" He looked around and shrugged. "I dunno. Sounded pretty to me. At _any_ rate, first things first, we need to get to know each other—"

He could almost **feel** the groan as his students stooped to remove paper and writing implements from their glossy new binders.

"Hey hey hey! Hold it." He put his hands up in a stopping gesture. "We ain't filling anything out. Don't worry." He saw the swooping sigh of relief as everyone put their things aways again, and chuckled. Very fun indeed.

"What we **are **doing," he said, once he was sure everyone's things were away again, "is introducing ourselves. What I want you to do – and I'm really serious, I want you to do this, and since I'm not making you right anything, you should be grateful – is to pretend that we are all strangers. All of us. Yes, I'm absolutely serious. I don't care if I've ever met any of you before. From this second onwards, we are absolute strangers. That goes for your fellow classmates as well. I don't care if you've never ever seen one another in your entire lives, I don't care if you've been best friends for eight years. You are **strangers**.

"Now, with that out of the way, **this** is your assignment: when it comes around to you, I want you to say whatever it is you want the rest of us to call you, and anything about you that we wouldn't know just looking atcha. **Or** your birth record," he added, remembering a trick Neji had tried to pull last year. Sure, he hadn't been able to tell he was 14 by looking at him, but that was _so_ not the point of the exercise.

The students exchanged confused looks.

"Yeah, you heard me right. Your name and one random thing to know about you. Oh, and don't include anyone else in your one random thing package, hm?" Naruto beamed down at them. "Anybody wanna start?"

There was eerie silence before someone had the gall to choke out what everyone was thinking. "D-do we just…raise our hands?"

"Tell yuh what," Naruto said, putting his hands on his hips. "We'll play Popcorn. Everybody know how to play Popcorn?"

No hands went up. He sighed, doggedly.

"Once you're done with what you have to say, yell 'popcorn' and some other random person will go. Got it? Now, then. Who's first?"

Tentative hands went up. There was only one that shot into the air. A red, spiky-haired girl in the front row with dark eyes and a huge t-shirt on over her uniform sat up straighter with automatic eagerness to be called on. Naruto withheld a smirk and pointed at her. "You."

"My name's Akamaru, and I like dogs!"

"Nice to meet you, Akamaru," Naruto said smiling at her.

She smiled back at him. "Popcorn!" she cried, cheerily. Naruto noted that she sounded oddly like a coyote when she said it.

A boy in back with dark hair and lines coming off of his eyes, wearing the same sweatshirt, leapt up with a fearsome look. The movement caught Naruto's eye. "I'm Kiba, and my twin sister just stole what I was going to say!"

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Hey hey hey. No bringing people other than yourself into the picture, Kiba." This guy made him bristle. "Pick something else to say. You don't have to say you _like_ dogs if you can somehow connect them to yourself."

Kiba folded his arms grouchily. "Fine…I'm Kiba, and…" - he seemed to ponder something before swelling with ego - "I've owned over forty-two dogs in my lifetime."

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Alright. It's a…_pleasure_, Kiba." This kid was going to irk him. He could feel it.

"Popcorn," the boy nodded.

A small girl in back raised her cream-colored hand daintily. Long, dark brown hair trailed down her back. Naruto noticed she was wearing a boy's uniform. That was odd. Oh well. He gestured to her. "Speak."

She smiled brightly, in a way that didn't seem to reach the depths of her eyes. It was beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. Naruto was almost shocked that the kid had such an impression on him so suddenly. He hadn't noticed her at the beginning, but now…well, she was stunning to say the least. Scary. Subtle, yet…gorgeous.

"My name is Haku," she said, "and I am a boy."

The entire class stared. Naruto nearly fainted.

"You-You're kidding!"

Haku smiled back at him.

"WHOA!" He peered closer. "Tha-WHOA! That is so cool! I thought you were a girl for sure, just in the wrong uniform! That is **so** cool!"

Haku looked pleased with himself. "Nope. I'm a boy."

Naruto couldn't help but gawk. It wasn't often he got tricked by the whole androgeny thing. That took skill and a hell of a lot of talent. "That's awesome!"

However, he hung up on something. "Whoa, wait up. Wouldn't that be on your birth transcript?"

Haku smiled gently. "I have none. So no."

Naruto watched him for a minute. "Okay. Won't delve in any deeper than I'm allowed. But, dude, that is really neat. Jesus. Great to meet you Haku!"

The boy smiled up at him. "Popcorn."

It was then that the hand raised itself in the back. The pale colored skin it was attached to made the obviously starched and pressed suit seem much darker than it really was. It was a good combination, the black on almost-white, a combination that was matched in that boy's eyes and obsidian-colored, silky-looking hair.

Naruto found himself staring again. Like Haku, it was almost difficult to tell which of the genders the boy in front of him belonged to, although whether he was either didn't exactly matter, beauty-wise. His face and hands were perfect. In fact, everything about him seemed to be perfect.

Attractive. And scary. Real scary.

Naruto mentally shook himself and gestured to the boy, loosely. "Go."

"Uchiha Sasuke."

His voice was deep. Smooth. It made Naruto shiver for feelings he didn't completely understand at the moment. It scared the living shit out of him. Something about the name 'Uchiha' clicked in the back of his brain. He wasn't quite sure what it was. He stared into Sasuke's face, the dark eyes mesmerizing him, drawing him in. He had the distinct feeling that he was being hypnotized…made weak by a cobra's stare…

"And there is someone I have sworn to kill."

Naruto's head reeled, and he felt as if he was careening in and out of reality for a brief moment, before shaking himself again, and almost ridding himself of it completely.

"Nice to meet you Uchiha Sasuke."

The rest of the day seemed to whiz by, and it was only when he received a bottle of Advil tied with a pink bow at lunch that he realized he still had a headache.

* * *

**The-Scarecrow signed on at 9:02:56 PM.**

**BANGUZUMAKI signed on at 9:16:19 PM.**

**BANGUZUMAKI:** boo  
**The-Scarecrow:** Oh, this day is just full of surprises.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** yea no kiddign  
**The-Scarecrow:** Kidding.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** dont correct my spelling  
**The-Scarecrow:** Always have, always will.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** ur so annoying  
**The-Scarecrow:** But of course.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** D:  
**The-Scarecrow:** Still upset about this morning?  
**BANGUZUMAKI: **yea no fuck  
**The-Scarecrow:** Such a foul mouth.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** again  
**The-Scarecrow:** It's not my fault, you know. You need to learn to manage your time more wisely.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** or i could just start running faster  
**The-Scarecrow:** Or you could just be on time.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** ur one to tlk  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** u just get lucky cuz irukas to distractd by me to do to mucht o u  
**The-Scarecrow:** Your typing is atrocious.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** dont care  
**The-Scarecrow:** You surprise me, Naruto. Bad day?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** alittle  
**The-Scarecrow:** What happened?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** iunno  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** got beetin  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** alredy  
**The-Scarecrow:** No kidding. Iruka's being a real stickler this year.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** i bet u think its hot  
**The-Scarecrow:** That's not the only thing that has you riled, I assume.  
**BANGUZUMAKI: **im fine we just got some interesting students ths yr  
**The-Scarecrow:** You don't like them?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** i like them  
**The-Scarecrow:** What's the problem then?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** nthin  
**BANGUZUMAKI: **u meet haku tday?  
**The-Scarecrow:** The one with chocolate-hair who looks like a girl?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** yea  
**The-Scarecrow:** I did. Seems to have a large amount of talent when it comes to academics. A wonderful sprinter, as well.  
**BANGUZUMAKI: **cool  
**The-Scarecrow:** Have you had dinner yet?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** no  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** i thnk ill grab some ramen nd hit the hey  
**The-Scarecrow:** Hay.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** sure  
**The-Scarecrow:** Go, then.  
**BANGUZUMAKI: **kay  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** good nite  
**The-Scarecrow:** Oyasuminasai.

**BANGUZUMAKI signed off at 9:25:03 PM.  
**

* * *

**End Chapter 01**

Well, that's done. I do agree, I indeed need a beta. But whatever. Once I get my website up and running I'll try to focus more on that kind of thing… -sighs- I'm pathetic.

At any rate, yeah "The-Scarecrow" is Kakashi's instant-messaging screen name. All who recognized that, I commend you. Kakashi's name literally means Scarecrow…how many people knew that, just out of curiosity?

Go to my profile to see updates on the fic. And don't forget to vote on pairings! I will do near anything for you guys, I swear it.

I also apologize if this wasn't that funny…whenever I aim to be I'm usually not. –wilts- The only line that actually made _me_ laugh was the one from Gai about the "young buck". –giggles- I was actually pretty proud of that.

Review me. Critique me. Compare me to feces. Anything. Just don't let me die a lonely death.

_--Lady Lamb_


	3. Nettles and Notebooks

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching... SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** Chapters will become more difficult to write as the school year starts up once more. Wish me luck…I'm finally off to high school! –sweatdrop- So long as I don't die, I'll try to write and update as often as I possibly can. I deeply request your patience. Also, this is going to get increasingly difficult (to the point of impasse) if my reviewers refuse to vote on pairings! Come on you guys! It's freedom of choice! Shower me with ideas!

**Note:** Get your yaoi groove on, baby.

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2005. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_by The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 2**

**" Nettles, notebooks,**

**and worse things. "**

Naruto smiled down at his shopping cart, which was half filled with a gigantic stack of orange spiral notebooks. The store was barren, his footsteps and the creaking of the shopping cart's wheels echoing of the grungy tile. The fluorescent lights made it shine like water, which was deceiving if you had ever had the misfortune to have to sweep it up after hours.

While he was in the correct section, Naruto scooped the latest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records into his cart out of the clearance bin. It was rather thick this year. His smile widened and he wheeled out of the aisle, headed for the cashier.

Anko didn't even give his load a second glance. Somehow, she had been able to maintain her job behind the register of Murphy's School Supplies for a good three years now. And it really only took one of Naruto's notebook binges to get you used to them for life. She snapped her gum and punched in the amount.

"Are you sure you got **all** the orange ones?" she said, taking the amount he offered her from his frog-shaped wallet with a sarcastic look.

"Sure am, Beano." Naruto grinned back at her and she scowled at the nickname. The receipt printed out from the machine with a buzzing whirr, and both salesperson and customer jumped as a large clatter followed by a resounding crash at one of the farthest aisles. From the ensuing yells from Iruka, Kakashi had just toppled Gai by way of shopping cart. Naruto stifled his laughter, able to picture the P.E. teacher's impassiveness in perfect clarity.

Anko gave him a severe look. "Tell your friends to settle down, will you? It took me all day to stack those highlighters properly."

* * *

Boxes and boxes and boxes. Naruto dragged the first one in, using his back to push the door to his room open. He had taken the liberty of turning all of the lights on in the halls. The dark made him unbearably nervous, even in his own school.

He held the door open as Iruka, Gai and Kakashi came in with the other boxes, the dolphin nodding to him a smile of thanks. He smiled back, unfazed by the ungodly hour of evening it was. He was more awake than ever as he shut the door behind them, slightly spooked by the shadows and bad memories but not thinking much of it with his promised company. He was up on the counter in an instant, leaving dusty footprints in his wake. He took the first giant of cardboard and shoved it up on the cabinets with difficulty.

They continued to cart boxes upon boxes in as the night wore on. Naruto's arms ached but he neither tired nor relented in his stacking. His biceps could handle the strain and he knew it. They continued on stacking until what seemed like very late and then he was off the counter, locking up his room and helping them cart their barrels of materials off to wherever they needed it. Overall, it seemed like a relatively quick process, although the clock face stated otherwise.

It was nearing one in the morning when he received the knowing tap on the head from Kakashi.

"You need to go home, dunce."

Naruto stuck his tongue out, but it was in a good natured sort of way. He smiled back at the boxes on the cupboards in his now deserted room, the warm, cozy feeling he always got unfurling in him. He hugged Iruka farewell, promised to take his medication twice, and bid the rest of them goodnight, following Kakashi out and down the few block to his house.

He smiled back at the scarecrow in a sassy sort of way.

"Okay. I'm home now."

"Taking the hint," Kakashi said, nodding and waving his hand loosely. "Sleep, and then wake up again."

"Can do." Naruto grinned in the dark. It was an old saying of Kakashi's, and hearing it pleased him.

And as soon as the words were exchanged, the scarecrow had vanished as he always did, leaving Naruto to scald on the landing of his apartment building, looking out into night for a long, long while. Finally, he reached into his pocket, took out the silver key and turned it in the lock, going up the three flights of stairs to his apartment.

The door was old, worn and made of oak. There was nothing adorning it, as would have been expected from a man of Naruto's vibrancy. He shrugged off the bereft feeling he got looking it over and went in, taking his shoes off and wading through the carpet.

All the lights were on as they always were. He walked to the bathroom and took a white bottle from the medicine cabinet behind his mirror, shaking a few tablets into his hand and swallowing them with a sip of water, tipping his throat back. He drank the rest of the water, taking a wash clothe and wetting it before rubbing at his cheeks to take off the foundation.

Three scar-like tattoos stared back into his hollow blue eyes, reflected in the mirror. He watched himself for what seemed like a very, very long time before putting the bottle back in the cabinet and walking out of the bathroom. He turned on none of his lights as he walked to the bedroom, taking off his shirt and hanging it neatly in his closet, and collapsing on his bed. He pulled the covers up around himself, the light on his ceiling watching him wordlessly from above.

He let his eyelids slip closed, and his sleep was dreamless.

* * *

Naruto had had the sense to wear tennis shoes the second day, a trick he had forgotten over summer break. He was just as late as he had been the day before however because of whom he nearly ran down half way through the second hall.

"**Whoa!**"

He spiraled over an outstretched leg, landing on his shoulder and rolling into a crouch, swearing. He spun around to scowl up at the owner of the offending limb, who seemed entirely disaffected by the exchange.

"You're gunna make the fire alarms go off, Shika-chan," Naruto said, gesturing to the smoke billowing between Nara Shikamaru's pursed lips from where the science teacher was leaning near his door. A few belated arrivals hurried in, looking slightly queasy at the smell.

Shikamaru took another puff at the cigarettes end. "Whatever," he said, not sparing Naruto a look.

The blonde's scowl deepened at the edges and he rested his right cheek on his fist. "Is that even legal?"

Shikamaru shrugged, replacing the cigarette in his mouth and blowing again. "You never seem to trouble yourself over the legality of your own actions."

Naruto watched him for a second, and flinched as the bell rang. "…You gunna apologize for almost killing me?"

Shikamaru shrugged again. "I didn't almost kill you. You should have been looking where you were going."

Naruto stared up at him for a second more before standing, taking the cigarette package from Shikamaru's left pocket, plucking the cigarette from the man's lips and smashing it against the opposite wall in one flowing movement and smirking in his face. "Kay. Have a good morning then." And he was gone, zooming down the hall.

Shikamaru's eyes followed him, and the man twitched. "How troublesome…"

* * *

Run run run run. Skid. Throw open the door. Get in, get in. Stop. Pant pant pant. Look up and—

"YOU'RE LATE!"

Wham!

Ow. Okay. That hurt.

Naruto groaned and rolled over, looking green in the face and clutching his stomach as the famed and abhorred beets rolled off in another direction. "Oh my **God** Sakura, what did you **do** this summer!"

"P.E. CAMP WITH KAKASHI! NOT THE POINT!"

Naruto groaned again clutching his abdomen. "**Tell me** you went out for the softball team like he asked you to."

He saw her eyebrow raise ever so slightly. "…Why?"

"Because it'd be a crime if you didn't, with an arm like that."

She snarled menacingly. "I'm not sure how to take that."

"As a compliment." He shoved her a meek smile, still holding his stomach.

"_Right_."

"I'm serious!"

"Sure you are."

"I _am_!" He coughed out a chuckle with difficulty.

"Uh-_huh_." She gave him a chastising glare that was so similar to Iruka's it almost made Naruto shiver.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. You see, I would have been here on time, but there was this ugly cat that got in my way and—"

"LIAR!"

Ah, what a way to start a school day. Naruto shrugged and Sakura helped him up, laughing when he told her off for being so late to her own class and hurrying out.

The blonde sighed and looked around the room.

"Yeah, good morning to you guys too."

No body moved, nor made a sound. Naruto had to resist the urge to twitch with difficulty.

"Do you guys ever breathe?"

That earned him a laugh from Haku. He smiled, the sound reminding him of rain falling, echoing prettily in a way that was _madly_ contagious. There we go. That was better.

"C'mon guys! I'm not that frightening! Inhale! Exhale! It's just school, chill out!"

He heard a few students take his advice and laugh. "Honestly. You guys are so uptight! Jeez! Talk a little! It's depressingly silent in here."

He heard Haku laugh again, and more than one person join him.

"Better. Much better." He clapped his hands together. "Alright! So how are you all doing this morning?" He looked around. "C'mon, I want to know. Good? Bad? Mental?" He put the last part on as an afterthought. Might as well keep them laughing and loose, at any rate.

"Never been better, Sensei," Akamaru laughed from the first row.

"Then I'll be the _first_ to say you're mental," Kiba crowed from behind her.

The class laughed as Akamaru scowled back up at her brother. Again, Naruto noticed Neji's small cousin in the back row and his smile broadened.

"Alright, alright. On that note - " he clapped his hands together as he was apt to do " – I've got a present for all of you."

His student blinked, laughter dying down into a more comfortable, questioning silence.

"No, honestly," he said, still grinning as he went to the cupboards, putting his hand down and leaning against the black counter top that ran beneath them. "Went out and got 'em last night, just for you guys." He looked around the room. "I need help getting 'em down though. We got anybody strong who's willing to lift down a huge box from offa here?"

A few hands went up, and once again he was struck by the boy in back that look like a snake with alabaster skin. He called on him automatically, the name cueing on his tongue before it hit his brain.

"Uchiha Sasuke."

He nodded to the boy who readily came forward and lifted himself up onto the counter with a lithe, acrobatic sort of grace. Naruto watched him in the same sort of entrancement he had undergone the day previous, almost enthralled by the way the boy's black eyes shone with depth and yet revealed nothing. He could the muscles in his arms curl and bunch elegantly as he lifted the huge box from it's place on the shelf and set it down with a dull thud on the countertop, hopping off of it and walking back to his seat as if he had just swatted a fly, not one hair out of place. It was the thud that awakened Naruto (as well as most of the rest of his class) and he nodded to Sasuke's retreating back.

"Hai. Thankyou." He took the box in his hands and lifted it off of the counter, walking it over to set it on the front table at the left of the room, nearest the cabinets, peeling the cover open and lifting out the first of the fifty bright orange spiral bound notebooks up so that all could see.

The students gaped. He _swore_ by all that was holy he heard Uchiha Sasuke mutter something about an assault on his eyes and grinned.

"Alright. _This_ is what I went to the trouble to get you. It's orange. It's relatively big. It's got your name on the cover. Do _not_ be a moron and lose it, because if you do, you are going to be one very miserable little creature. **Do I make myself clear?**" He looked around the classroom, putting his hands on his hips, and saw many students nod, looking fearful. His grin widened. "Excellent. Come up and get yours, then."

They approached him as if entering a torture chamber in single file.

Chouji, the kid in back he had begun to tell off _constantly_ for his terrible eating habits, lifted his warily by the front cover, eyeing it like one eyes a particularly unpleasant piece of roadkill. "Is there a reason they had to be _orange_?" he said, almost disgustedly.

"Yeah," Naruto said putting his hand on his hips. "I don' like pink if we aren't on the topic of Sakura's hair." Chouji exchanged him a venomous look and he ignored it, correcting his stature and looking around his sea of students. "Any other stupid questions?"

"I've been told, _sensei_," came an emotionless voice with a chilling edge from behind him, "that there is no such thing as a stupid question."

Naruto's blue eyes met Uchiha's dark ebony ones and they stared into one another for a moment.

"Well obviously, Uchiha Sasuke-kun," Naruto said, smirking, "whoever told you that was dead wrong. Because _that_ was a stupid question."

Chouji grumbled something and stalked off. Uchiha's eyes lingered on him for a short while, endlessly cold, before he slipped back into the crowd of soft chit chat and was back in his seat with the notebook labeled his before Naruto had proper time to calculate his being gone.

Chairs scraped again as everyone clattered back into them, blinking back at him with a bewildered sort of air, notebooks in hand. He smiled at the familiar tangerine glow of the covers. Oh, he _loved_ notebook day. _Loved_ it. If there was anything that made him feel better during the school year (other than his students, of course) he did not know its name nor what form it took.

"Anou…sensei." Haku spoke clearly but softly, raising his hand to indicated that he wished speaking rights in his place at the back of the class.

"Yeah?" Naruto looked up at the boy out of his reverie.

Haku seemed unfazed by his teacher's now-uniform lack of etiquette. "Sensei, I'm afraid I don't understand. What is it we need notebooks for in history class?"

"Writing assignments, of course."

He heard, as assuredly he had heard it on the first day, a class-wide groan.

"Oh, c'mon you guys!" he said, looking around distastefully. "It's school, what're you expecting?"

More groans.

He sighed. "Look, I know you guys are missing summer vacation. _Trust me_ I do. But you guys are back in school once again, and _high school_ no less. C'mon. Relax. I'm _not_ going to load you up with homework, I promise."

"You _swear_?" Akamaru said shrilly, piping up from her seat in the first row.

Naruto sighed again, his smile reappearing ever so faintly on his lips. "I _swear_ I will not load you up with homework. Trust me. Grading is the only thing I _don't_ completely adore about my job. You will _not_ get a lot of worksheets in this class. You will _not_ get a lot of homework. You will _not_ be having very many tests. And you know why? Cuz _I _don' wanna grade 'em. And that is the only thing that will matter in this class…_whether or not I wanna do it._ So trust me, if you make me want to do something, it'll happen, and vice versa."

"So can we talk you _out _of these notebooks?" Kiba said, almost whining.

"No." Naruto said it immediately without a shadow of a doubt as soon as the question was asked.

"Sensei," Haku said from the back, raising his hand again.

"Speak."

"What kind of writing assignments?"

"Not essays if that's what you're thinking."

"What kind though?" Akamaru spoke out of turn now, advocating for Haku's request.

"Whatever I tell you to write." He smirked down at her and she stuck her tongue out at him.

"For instance?"

Naruto and the Uchiha stared at one another for a good long time. Both sets of eyes were narrow with a slightly violent and conflicting sheen. Blue versus black. The timeless divergence. The electricity shot between them and vibrated against the air in a way that near everyone could recognize.

"_For instance_, Uchiha-san," Naruto ground out finally, "the writing assignment I'm about to give you."

Another class-wide groan. Naruto and Sasuke finally broke their staring contest as Naruto looked around the rest of the room.

"Right. I'm going to give you the rest of the time in class to do this. I want three paragraphs – that's right, gimme three _good solid_ paragraphs – on what you think history is and why, written on the first page of your notebooks. If you don't finish it it's homework."

Today was official Groan Day, Naruto decided with a chuckle. But, oh well. That's what they got for assuming his class would be easy.

* * *

The teacher's lounge in the center hall was one of the places Naruto felt safest. For him, safety was the essence of all ability to be happy, and that's simply the way it was. And of course, safety was being in a place with many of his Precious People so that lurking, unwelcome Ghosts did not come wandering into his brain. He didn't like Ghosts.

The bell rang and the clamors disappeared as the last students exited the halls to head for the cafeteria for lunch. Naruto's shoes squeaked against the tile as he walked the length to the door, opening it with a smile, his feet meeting carpet at long last.

Kakashi was already there, his mask tilted downwards ever so slightly so that he could sip at his china mug of black coffee. He looked comfortable. Iruka was nearby flicking through a newspaper and muttering something about scantily clothed women in advertisements and blushing faintly. Both looked up when he entered the room and he waved to them with a grin.

"Yo." Kakashi nodded over at him.

"Naruto!" Iruka smiled up at his cheerily.

Naruto laughed and thudded down on the couch beside him. "You seem to like me so much at lunch, Iruka-sensei, and yet _everyday_ I'm met with a beet can to the gut with your name written _all _over it. Do you, like, just get kicks out of buying me ramen, or what?"

Iruka gave him a chastising look. "You shouldn't be late if you don't want to get 'beeten' so often Naruto!"

Said blonde laughed, looking casual. "Sure, sure. Whatever you say Iruka."

The dolphin cast him a maternal glare which made him laugh more.

There was a click and the door opened slightly. Naruto stopped laughing to look over. It was Lee, who was looking slightly green, with bags under his eyes as he wheezed slightly. Looking as though he had run the whole way there.

"Oi, Lee, you okay? You aren't lookin' too good." Naruto watched the boy sway, as if his eyes were going in and out of focus as they landed on him.

"Aa, Naruto-sensei. Is Gai-sensei here?"

Naruto shook his head. "Have you checked his room?"

Lee nodded but smiled tiredly. "No worries. I'll check around the rest of the campus. Thankyou anyway, Naruto-sensei!"

And then the door clicked behind him and he was gone.

Naruto looked back to Kakashi. "You had him last period. What's up with him. Is he sick?"

Kakashi shrugged, looking slightly pensive. "Must be. But he wasn't looking too badly when he ran five laps instead of one."

Naruto shook his head, slightly worried. "Hope he's okay…"

Kakashi shrugged again and sipped his coffee.

Iruka sighed. "Naruto, let's go get your ramen."

Naruto cheered, mind leaving the subject of Lee in an instant.

* * *

**Chapter 02**

BETA. I **NEED **ONE. REALLY REALLY BADLY. –huge sigh-

God, that took forever. And it's so short, mostly because I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. -sighs again- I know what I'm doing next chapter though! –flails about, seeking pity-

I need good reviewers too, because so far, I've sent out the line and _nothing's come back_ (excepting my dearest friend, Jyarimaru-chan… -smiles-). I need need need need need you guys to vote on pairings or this baby is officially going to die. Which would really suck because there is awesome awesomeness to come, and if you miss out now, well that's just sad.

I will do _anything _for you guys! Come on! Just pick a random pairing and vote, damn you!

-sighs- All my love and affection.

--_Lady Lamb_


	4. Then Don't

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching... SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** Oh. My. God. I love you guys so so so so much. –showers with love- You voted on pairings! Omigod! Yee-ness! Ahem. At any rate, I'd like to announce that I've goaded my dearest friend Katana (whom I seem to successfully goad into _so_ very many things… -guilty smile-) into becoming my BETA. Score. –pumps hand- This, in turn, will be the last chapter I go about editing on my own.

I will be answering any questions and acknowledging all comments anyone has left me in reviews at the end of the chapter, so read it through. –is goading _you_ into something now-

**Note:** Oh yeah. Yaoi. Damn straight bitch. Well…not really. It's kind of…oh never mind…

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2005. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_by The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 3**

**" If you can't touch this**

**Then _don't_. "**

Week two. The _end_ of week two to be more specific. Naruto was relatively proud of them, his first period especially. First period were the ones who revved up his day, got him started. It pleased him to have such a great body of students as he did first thing in the morning. They had gotten more talkative in the fortnight that had passed from the moment he had first met them. A few were already growing quite well on him, Haku and Akamaru formost, as well as Hyuuga Hinata.

But, looking over the notebooks he had collected in the light of his bedroom, late one Sunday night, he scowled. There were a lot of good things about first period. But there were some things about it that he just couldn't stand. Certain people that just made him bristle, that rubbed in a way so wrong it took all of the control he had to resist the temptation to start a brawl.

One of those people was the author of the spiral-bound that currently lay in his lap. His blue eyes flashed, looking it over for the umpteenth time. Smart-alecks he could handle. But things like _this_…

It was the assignment he had given out last Tuesday. "Write your description of history in three paragraphs" was what he had been sure (and repeatedly proven) was the work he had given. And _this_?_ This _was so near intolerable, he could feel his hands tremble.

_Uchiha Sasuke  
Freshman History  
Period 1_

_**Assignment**: Define history. Three paragraphs._

_History is a systematic narrative of past events as relating to a people, country, or otherwise. These events can better furnish ones hopes and judgment in the future, as well as helping to better shed light on the true status of the present. _

_It is my belief that history should be treated with respect, due to the effort most historians put into their jobs, and it's importance in everyday life. Someone's personal/family history (or lineage) can define who they and what they are expected to be, as a peon of society._

_History's habit of repertoire makes it a vital learning tool that most everyone should be able to fall back on._

It was probably even more offensive that the printing was far neater than anyone's he had ever seen, rivaling Haku's and Neji's in a way that almost irritated as much as the fact that he had been able to reference many of Uchiha's exact sentences in his college textbooks and Random House Dictionary in less than a few minutes. And he'd gone to the trouble to tell him so.

_**8/10. Well-written with nice penmanship. However, a paragraph in my class is three-four sentences long at the very least. Also, I'd like it more if your own definition of 'history' were further from those I can find in textbooks/other materials of a similar nature. **_

And it was the sentence just below that, written in the same, meticulous print, in black ink that could have burned your skin with its chill and sarcasm.

_So would I, Sensei._

He didn't think he'd been this angry with a student in his entire teaching career. And not only did that bode quite ominously, but it was saying quite a bit.

He bit his tongue and flipped further into the boy's notebook, relying on his quickly diminishing sense of self-control once again to not go scrawling obscenities all across its cover, very less his own walls.

'_Little smartass bastard…_'

* * *

**BANGUZUMAKI signed on at 7:44:44 PM.**

**dogEred signed on at 9:00:13 PM.**

**dogEred:** Sensei!  
**dogEred:** !  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** evening akamaru-chan!  
**dogEred:** :-)  
**dogEred:** Good evening!  
**dogEred:** How are u?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** im fairing wonderfully  
**dogEred:** Terrific!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** and u  
**dogEred: **Oh, I'm ttly good, sensei!  
**dogEred:** As alwys!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** of course  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** :D  
**dogEred:** Oh, oh!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** what what?  
**dogEred:** I meant to ask u.  
**dogEred:** Cuz mi bro wants on.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** ?  
**dogEred:** Have u graded the spirals yet?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** of course.  
**dogEred:** Really!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** nevr get on w/out finishing hw first  
**dogEred:** Awesome!  
**dogEred:** Nd u graded mine?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** u _r_ incorporated in the class grade, akamaru  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** XD  
**dogEred:** XD  
**dogEred:** Can I have my grade?  
**dogEred:** Would that b ok?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** 73/75  
**BANGUZUMAKI: **u did very well  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** as always  
**dogEred:** Gr8!  
**dogEred:** Thx so much sensei!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** :D  
**dogEred:** ok  
**dogEred:** I'm going to give the comp over to Kiba now!  
**dogEred:** Thx again sensei!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** okay  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** n e time akamaru-chan!  
**dogEred: **G'nite!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** nite

**dogEred signed off at 7:50:06 PM.**

**BANGUZUMAKI signed off at 11:23:00 PM.**

* * *

Naruto shot down the hall, less than two minutes behind the bell (which was oddly timely on his part, he thought) and reached the door, almost hurling himself through it as he always did. 

"Aw!"

The beets came more quickly than he was expecting, before he even had time to catch his breath, instead knocking it out of him and catching him right beneath the ribs. He keeled but resisted the urge to fall straight over, clutching his stomach and trying to resist the urge to curse.

"YOU'RE LATE!"

"Only a little!"

"YOU'RE LATE NONETHELESS!" Sakura looked to be particularly upset about that particular fact this morning. Naruto raised an eyebrow at her, feeling queasy and wondering why, but not bothering to ask.

He sighed, instead, trying to recover his lungs. "Yeah, I guess I am."

She scowled down at him. "Bad mood today, sensei, incase you hadn't noticed, so you'd better spit out whatever excuse you've got."

The response rolled silkily off of his tongue along with its conjoined twin of a smirk.

"Got none."

It caught her off of her guard just as much as he had wanted it to.

"…Eh?"

His smirk widened and he tried desperately to retain his innocent exterior.

"I got none. You're right to be angry. I have no excuse as to my lateness."

He watched her eye him suspiciously.

"You can _not_ be serious."

"Oh, but I am Sakura-chan."

The pink-haired girl sniffed, regaining her air of frustration. "Fine then."

"Fine then."

She offered him a hand up without looking at him and he received it openly. She whisked by him and out the door.

"Have a good day, Sakura-chan."

"Right."

The green barrier swung shut behind her. He stared after her, putting his hand on his hips almost mindlessly.

"Okay, don't tell her I told you guys this, but she is _definitely_ PMSing."

Laughter resounded. Naruto turned back to them and smiled widely.

"Morning you guys."

"Morning, sensei!" A few of them called back to him, smiling just as widely as he was, laughter still ringing in their voices in a way that made him unbearably happy. He felt lifted, as if on wings of ecstasy.

"You doing good then?"

"Plenty good, sensei!" Akamaru barked.

Naruto walked forward to his lecturn at the center of the classroom, chuckling. "Excellent, excellent. The better you feel, the more fun you are to teach."

His grin turned slightly sadistic as he reached into the cubby whole of the podium, taking out a semi-think stack of papers. "And it also make it _a lot_ more fun to tell you…"

He saw them lean forward slightly, in hastily hidden interest, and near-about burst out in a cackle.

"…that you have a test today."

The classroom exploded.

Akamaru screamed, leaping up from her desk with a look of absolute panic on her face. Chouji, in back, seemed to have gone a sickly pale. Haku looked surprised, to say the least. Kiba snarled, menacingly. Hinata blushed in back and fiddled at the end of her uniform shirt, looking down at her legs. Children left and right were gasping, choking, and coughing out excuses.

"What!"

"Sensei, why!"

"You said you hated grading!"

"We need time to study!"

"Aw, man, this is the only class I'm not failing, too…!"

Naruto laughed openly and began handing stacks of paper out to be passed back down the rows.

"When you get your tests, feel free to start, yuh little whiners."

Loud groans and panicked whisperings and exclamations were emitted as his students scrambled to grab up their pens and take the papers as they were handed back.

Naruto noticed, with more-than-slight annoyance, that Uchiha Sasuke wore the same disaffected expression he always did throughout the entire performance.

* * *

Naruto trotted into the teacher's lounge nearly unannounced, which was out of character for him, going to the kitchen area and fishing a soda out of the refrigerator. He glanced around as he popped it open and guzzled a good amount of it, his stomach gurgling in a way that almost made him cringe. He was _really_ hungry. 

Iruka looked over at him where he was reading a newspaper on the couch. "Skip breakfast again?" he said, reaching to adjust his slim reading glasses habitually, nodding and going back to his paper as Naruto grunted through a mouthful of soda in response. "You should stop doing that…" the dolphin sighed, turning a page.

"Mm," Naruto said, gulping it down. "Where's Kakashi?" He glanced around.

Iruka shrugged. "I think he said something about football when he was in here earlier…"

"Aa." That was that, Naruto supposed. He should have remembered that Kakashi's entire life was football at this time of year. Practice was constant, harsh and unforgiving; Kakashi was well known as one of the best, but most grueling football coaches in the nation. Konohagakure Academy had been the best team in the state ever since the scarecrow had been hired. He accepted nothing but the best. The best players, the best teamwork, the best effort, the best wins.

Because of that, Iruka and Kakashi's "getting together" had surprised him least out of all members of the staff when it finally came out. It was only predictable as hell, the blonde remembered thinking. Kakashi only accepted the best; Iruka would not tolerate _himself_ being anything less. It was a "duh"-couple. Not one he minded, but still. Duh.

And, the way Iruka was addressing is hunger, it was also kind of 'duh' that Kakashi was the one with Iruka's wallet.

Naruto sighed and popped open another soda. "That stuff's terrible for your kidneys. You know that right?" Naruto nodded back at Iruka and the dolphin sighed again, knowing full well that he was being disregarded.

A large clatter in the hallway brought both quite abruptly out of their reverie. It sounded like metal hitting tile, and the sound of it made both freeze, going stock still.

"Did you hear that?" Naruto said, his tone deathly quiet and serious as his blue eyes flashed, hardening. He took the lip of the aluminum can from his own and set it on the counter, unmoving.

Iruka nodded slowly, his expression similar as he began to rise from the couch.

They listened for a few more moments, before they heard it again. Twice. Three times. And then an accompanying thud that sounded an _awful _lot like a body colliding with a wall.

"Shall we, then?"

They both moved forward, swinging the door open and taking off down the hallway. The noises immediately rung even more clearly, accompanied by more thudding, and yelling voices in the empty hallways.

"Faggot!"

"Why don't you ever give up!" Clang.

"Dip-shit!" Thud.

"Just die already!" Clang, thud.

"You really think anyone likes you?"

"Yeah!"

"Stupid fag!"

"We're gunna bash your fucking head in!"

They turned around a corner and heard it at the end of the corridor. Coming from a _classroom_ no less. It sounded like about five people beating on someone else. _Why don't any of the punks eat lunch anymore?_ Naruto wondered to himself as Iruka and himself barreled down the hall and through the door.

And then they froze, so taken aback by what it is they saw.

The room had been dismantled. Countless desks had been tipped over, and the papers on a desk in the corner were askew. All the blinds on the windows were pulled shut. The wide white floor was scattered with skid marks, small dents and markings, and small drops of blood. Posters and the like had been ripped and torn on the wall where five boys stood, as if cemented in place, staring back at the two administrators who had just burst in upon them. Two had bloodied fists. One was holding a half of a splintered ruler, the other half of which was across the room. The metal bit at the end was a hairsbreadth away from what seemed to be the oaf's intended victim, who seemed barely conscious and was holding his wrist at an odd angle.

It was indeed this victim who decided to break the silence, turning his head dazedly to gaze over at the teachers as his classic nice guy grin slid into place, his bowl cut bangs hanging over a black eye and a bloodied lip.

"Hey, Naruto-sensei. Iruka-sensei."

Naruto stared down at him, so shocked that he seemed to have lost all ability to speak, or even have a coherent thought bless him. Thus, Iruka was the first to say anything, seeming to be in a similar state of being.

"Lee…"

With that one sentence, Naruto's rage adjoined itself to him, billowing forth volcanically, and he _exploded_. Iruka had no time to stop him as the blonde practically leapt forward, grabbing the ruler from the key perpitator, and whipping it about to catch him hard in the arm. The boy yelled as the wood splintered across his biceps and he stumbled, looking to be caught completely off of his guard.

"What the hell was tha—"

Naruto grabbed his collar and rammed him back-first into the flooring. The boy yelled again.

"Naruto!" Iruka yelled, panicky from where he was holding Lee.

"Y-You can't hurt me…!" the boy yelled, his friends stumbling back from where Naruto held him against the tile by his thick throat. "You're a teacher…my parents…they'll sue…"

"You'd best shut your face you little _fuck_," Naruto hissed, voice sharp with toxicity, "if you don't want me to shut it _for_ you."

Silence rained, and the boy looked scared. Naruto stared back at him with eyes that had gone a ghostly, glassy and pale shade of ice blue in his fury. He couldn't remember having ever been this angry at a student. Ever.

And then, of all moments for it to cue in, it clicked.

Lee had been sporting new bruises and a tired look since the second day of the first week.

Naruto picked the boy's head up and rammed it back on the floor again, flames of his thundering wrath re-ignited with vengeance.

"Aw, fuck--!" the boy choked.

"YOU LITTLE _BITCH_! HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THIS TO HIM! HOW _DARE_ YOU! YOU LITTLE _BASTARD_! YOU LITTLE MOTHER-FUCKING _BASTARD_!"

If he had noticed that his fist had clenched and risen as he said this, there was doubt in his mind whether he'd have caught himself, or cared. The guy deserved to have his fucking face bashed in. Nobody deserved this, least of all Rock Lee. It wrung all throughout his brain, the impulse to punch. The impulse to punch and rip and snap bones until he was _begged_ to stop…

Lucky for his tenure, a gloved hand caught his before it came down.

"That's enough."

Naruto spun around to stare Kakashi in the eye, breathing hard from yelling, his whole body shaking with rage. He wanted to kill. He had never had such a desire to kill since _then_, and he had never in his life felt more justified. Nobody hurt his favorite students. Ever.

"Kakashi—"

"That's _enough_, I said." The grip on Naruto's fist tightened, betraying the silver-haired man's own emotions. Naruto watched the scarecrow's control slip ever so slightly. Rage and fury equaling his own pulsed out of the man's skin.

Naruto's hands wouldn't stop shaking as he slowly looked back into the bully's frightened face and let go of his collar, standing and walking numbly back to Iruka who looked unbearably worried. He patted Lee's head gently, feeling dead. He couldn't stop shaking. It felt as if every muscle in his body were tensed.

The group behind him shuffled about nervously as Kakashi faced them. Naruto heard the guy he had almost walloped grumble a dark something about being choked to death as he slid back amongst his cronies. Kakashi didn't make a sound for what felt like hours. He simply stood there, staring out at them. Someone coughed. Naruto couldn't will himself away from Lee. No part of him wanted to do anything but protect right now, and some strange instinct told him to keep every hold on the boy that he possibly could.

Kakashi finally spoke out into the dead silence.

"Dosu, Zaku and Mizuki are _your_ subordinates, are they not, Iruka?"

Iruka looked up, seeming out of it. "Mm? Oh. Yes…I suppose they are." His eyes and voice tightened, narrowing and hardening into the deepest look of anger and shame that he openly threw at the three boys. Dosu, the one that had been leading the attack grunted and looked off. Zaku folded his arms across his chest. Mizuki looked indignant.

Kakashi nodded. "Kabuto's my charge…and then, of course, Sasuke is yours, Naruto."

Naruto whipped around immediately.

The Uchiha, who had stood in silence at the back of the group for the entire duration, stared back at him, unwavering, looking as calm as wind on a summer's day. His hand were in his pockets, and as the two of them watched one another, he slowly sighed and closed his eyes in a passive way, as if it were nothing worth his time.

The blonde's murderous intent regained itself, increasing ten-fold.

Iruka spoke quietly. "I'm…I'm going to take Lee to the nurse's office."

Kakashi nodded. "Quickly, I should think. Call Gai too, he's frantic."

Naruto spoke in a level tone despite himself, still staring at Sasuke. "Call Haruno Sakura while you're at it."

"Haruno-san…?" Iruka looked at him, puzzled.

"I expect she'll be just as worried as Gai, if not more so."

Iruka nodded and hurried out the door without another word.

* * *

Detention for a month. Every day for thirty-days, all five boys were to spend an hour after school. Their required GPA score to stay on the team was raised to a 3.0 and Mizuki was dropped immediately. Dosu would be required to stay an extra two hours at practice every day, and none would be included in celebratory gestures after games for their month of serving time, nor would they be credited with the .5 point bonus the school usually awarded its athletes with. 

Naruto, needless to say, was far from satisfied as he walked with Kakashi. The two of them had called in subs immediately after awarding the boys with their punishment. Students weren't exactly something they were ready to deal with after a show like _that_.

The blonde sighed, worming his hands deeper into his pockets and feeling the tight pressure on his chest burn against the strain of inflating and deflating his lungs on a regular basis. He was high-strung and tensed to the very maximum.

Kakashi seemed to be undergoing something similar as they made their ways down to the hall towards the nurse's office, side by side. Both took comfort in the other's presence, but they were both far too angry with what had just taken place to be too consoled.

Kakashi held open the door as they pushed into a small white room with an office door to one side and a bathroom to another, and a small, uncomfortable looking bed with tissue sheets in the corner. Iruka was talking somewhat unsteadily on a wall-bound telephone beside the entryway to the bathroom, and nodded to them as they came in, not breaking his sentence.

"I'm certain that's the case Onkyou-san, but whatever the case may be, they will be punished as our administrators see fit…"

Sakura hardly glanced up as the door clicked shut behind them, but she did aim a queasy smile over at Naruto in that amount of time, and he returned it appreciatively. Lee was fast asleep, head wrapped in bandages where it lay in her lap. Naruto realized that he was smiling, as if he had never been more content in his life. Somehow, that made him smile too, and his throat tighten in a way that almost made him feel like crying. It was good to know that there was someone who would, no matter what the circumstances, appreciate the smallest of conveniences.

Why couldn't there be more people like that in the world?

Gai was watching Lee's chest rise and fall from a chair beside the bed, looking as if _he_ had been the one beaten instead of his favorite student. His eyes were wide and unblinking as he stared, looking quite ready to faint. He was bent over slightly, his legs apart and his hands together in his lap. His skin was a sickly sort of pale green, no doubt out of the panic he was still recovering from and his fury over Lee's condition.

No one said a word except Iruka, who seemed to be having difficulties calming the woman on the other side of the phone. His own voice never changed in tone or strength, but Naruto noticed him holding the receiver away from his ear ever so slightly, and heard the static-y words on the other side of the line become almost coherent. He sighed and listened to it escalate as the conversation seemed to draw to a close.

"Yes ma'am I understand that…I assure you that I'm as upset about it as you are, but corporal punishment is hardly necessary, very less legal. Yes ma'am. I understand that, ma'am. I'll be sure to let him know that, ma'am. Alright. Yes. Every day for thirty days, yes. Please…yes, ma'am. Alright. Yes. Thankyou for your time, Onkyou-san." He sighed softly, in a delicate way that showed his reluctance to release to this woman information of his current frustration. "I understand ma'am. Certainly. Yes. Yes…yes, alright. Thankyou. Have a good day."

He hung up and heaved his breath out. Naruto eyed him, and noticed the clearly visible aggravation and distaste upon his cheeks.

"You okay, Iruka?"

The dolphin nodded, rubbing his temples. "I'll survive."

"Who was that?" Kakashi said softly, looking over at them from where he was standing beside Gai.

"Zaku and Dosu's mother. She's not pleased."

"Who _is_?" Naruto scoffed, smirking bitterly and looking off. "I s'ppose she wanted 'em let off easier?"

Iruka shook his head. "Quite the opposite. She sounded near ready to kill them herself, or at the very least allow _us_ to."

Naruto suddenly felt a kindred-ship blossom between himself and a woman he had only just heard screaming over the phone at a friend he'd known his entire life.

"No doubt Naruto would live out that privilege to its fullest," Kakashi said, chuckling lightly as he simply voiced the knowledge of everyone in the room.

Naruto nodded. "Damn straight I would."

Kakashi gave him a look. "You should mind yourself. You can't just go around hitting students."

"They can in Japan," the blonde said with a scathing sort of tongue. "I don't see why we can't do it here."

"Simple." The scarecrow gave him a matter-of-fact look. "We're not _in_ Japan. This is a Japanese-American private school, sure. But 'American' is still part of that word. And until it's not, we preach the State's teachings in Island tongue."

Naruto scoffed again, bitter smirk still in place.

Kakashi seemed to ignore him, dropping that particular part of the subject. "So, what's Lee's injury assessment?"

"Broken wrist and mild concussion. They're also worried that his eardrum might've been torn in a scuffle that must've taken place a few days ago in the band room…"

Naruto hissed through his teeth and swore, looking back at the unconscious boy.

Kakashi overlooked the scene again with his same calm exterior, but they could all sense the rage boiling behind his one visible eye.

Sakura looking trembly for a minute before the tears started.

Naruto went over to her immediately, getting down on the bed and putting an arm around her shoulders. She immediately turned into him and cried against his neck, hard and convulsive, sobbing for her own fear and for Lee's pain that none of them seemed to have been able to prevent. They were all quiet as the sound echoed around the room. Naruto petted the bubblegum hair without much thought, and Sakura sought him out for comfort without much of it on her part either. Her finger's still lay in Lee's dark green hair, just behind his ears, one which was bound thickly it made one wonder if it was somehow going to fall off otherwise.

Naruto bit down on his lips and let the hot tears soak into his shirt without complaint.

* * *

The coffee shop on Dan Street was small and homely in it's own conservative way. Naruto had never liked Starbucks because there was one on every street corner, and any one you went to served the same things as all the others. The cookie cutter thing bothered him in a way not many other things could. 

May Café was your classic, rundown-antique-shop-gone-wannabe-hipster sort of thing, and he liked it better. They had awesome sugar cubes, and the waitresses never minded if you just wanted to pay them two bucks and then just eat sugar cubes all day, so long as you weren't disruptive. And TenTen, who worked as assistant manager there, usually let her old ninth-grade history teacher get away with stuff like that with_out_ paying, which was nice too.

Said ninth grade history teacher sat across from his bisexual friend of a twelfth grade phys ed teacher, who was drinking black coffee with a bit of vodka mixed in. They had been here for around twenty minutes, saying next to nothing, one drinking 'hard' caffeine, and the other stacking and restacking a pile of sugar cubes that were slowly diminishing in number.

Kakashi was the one to finally speak.

"Did you know he was on the football team?"

"Who?"

"Sasuke."

"Uchiha?"

"How many Sasuke's are there?"

"Hmph."

Kakashi sighed. "You don't care for him too much, do you?"

"He's a prissy little fuck with a stick wedged up his ass and a swollen head. How much can there possibly be to care for?" The blonde spit out a piece of cardboard he'd been chewing on and replaced it with a sugar cube.

Kakashi sighed again, and silence reigned for a few more minutes (in which Naruto downed several more sugar cubes) until he broke the silence for good.

"You'll be in charge of his punishment, you know."

Naruto nodded with a grunt, withholding his own malicious glee at that thought. Oh he knew. _Damn_, did he know.

Kakashi watched him for a moment before going on.

"You gave a test today?"

"Mm-hmm." Naruto popped another sugar cube in his mouth.

"Did you tell any of your classes beforehand?"

"No."

Naruto looked up after a minute to find Kakashi staring at him. "What?"

"Are you _certain_ you told _none_ of your classes beforehand?"

"Yeeeeeah…?" There was a questioning suspicion in Naruto's voice as he leaned forward, eyes narrowing. He was _certain_ he hadn't told anyone about that test. Not even his fellow _teachers_ had known about it.

So where was Kakashi going with this…?

The teacher across from him sighed and reached down into the black, faded duffel bag he carried with him everywhere, drawing out a folded piece of paper and looking Naruto in the eye.

"I think you should have a look at this then."

Naruto's suspicion flared at the back of his neck, giving him a chill as he reached forward and taking the piece of paper between his fingers. He brought it back so that it lay in front of him and unfolded one edge, freezing immediately.

_No…_

The rest of it came undone in less then a second and he stared down at it.

_This…this is…_

"Kakashi…where did you get this?" Naruto's voice was dead. Kakashi sipped his coffee.

"They were passing it around the locker room."

Need, thick and ugly exploded in Naruto's stomach. This was too much to handle in one day.

"…Kakashi, what time is it?"

Kakashi glanced at his watch. "3:45."

Naruto nodded. "I..." He glanced down at the paper in his hand again, folding it shut for dislike of looking at it any more. He met Kakashi's eyes. "Can I keep this?" The scarecrow nodded, and he nodded back rising from his chair.

"Thanks…" He shoved it in his back pocket angrily and pursed his lips.

Kakashi, mind-reader he was, said the magic words. "I'll foot the bill."

"You're awesome, Kakashi." Naruto shot him a grin.

Kakashi simply nodded. "You ought to catch her before she gets off work. The kids always get rowdy at this time of day."

Naruto nodded and fingered a ring on his right ring finger. "Yeah. I'll say hi for you."

Kakashi nodded, and Naruto pushed his way out of the restaurant and out onto the city sidewalk, maneuvering his way through the huge crowds of people, listening as the bell rang out his departure as the door to May Café swung shut behind him. He dug his hands in his pockets, clenching and unclenching them, and all at once very aware of that ring.

He _really_ needed to talk to Yohko.

* * *

**End Chapter 03**

Whoo-pah! Yohko! Finally! Been waiting to bring her in for_evers_. -happy-

I liked that chapter. It was actually really easy to write, now that we're finally getting into the angsty shit that this fic practically _revolves_ around. So, if you absolutely hated it…well, then you _might_ want to consider either toughening up, or dropping this from your list of reading materials.

Please don't do that, though. –makes a face-

Righty, now I'll answer some questions and comments you had for me…I won't say names, I'll just kind of respond to them, if that's alright. That way, everybody can learn things. –smile-

**Why is Naruto the teacher and not Sasuke?** This was one of the earliest questions I ever received, and _wow_ did you make me remember stuff! There _is_ a reason why it's Naruto and not Sasuke playing teacher, and it's one of the reasons I decided to write this fic the way that I am. And it's this: even though Sasuke is the less conflicted character, who _seems_ to have a stronger and more dominant personality, Sasuke _doesn't_ really teach Naruto anything about himself. In fact, it's entirely the other way around, mostly because Sasuke has a lot to learn about the things that _don't_ come easily to him, and those things are most of the simple things that make a person _human_. The ability to trust and grow, for instance… (If you want a more detailed answer for this, the question inspired me to write a brainstorm which explores it in depth, and I would be glad to mail the file to anyone that wants it.)

Okay. Next question.

**Is there a Hokage position that Naruto aspires to fill?** Oh God, yes. Isn't there always? –sighs- Naruto's dreams help make him who he is. I refuse to do something stupid to it, though, like a lot of other writers tend to do. Naruto _does _aspire to be a sort of "Hokage". Well, atleast he _did_. And trust me, it's nothing like being principal.

Remember, I like making people pay attention to small details. This chapter should reveal that pretty obviously. My BETA Katana was reading it over in our English class today and looked up at me after she was done.

"God, that Lee thing…" she said. "Yeah," I said. "I thought he was just sick," she said. "Exactly," I said. "It's kind of surprising, and yet not really," she told me. And I'm like "Yup, that's the way I wanted it to be."

Pay attention. This is _not_ the last time I will do this to you.

Why? Because I'm mean, and I like to read books that make you piece things together like that.

Okay. Next question.

**Where do you get the ideas for how Naruto acts as a teacher?** –laughs- I'm actually drawing from real life experience on this one. Naruto is based _primarily_ on one of my favorite teachers of all time, Mr. Leister (who I will go on about for _hours_ if you let me) who was the most awesomest of awesome teachers I have ever had. I have never learned more, or had more fun in a history class than I did in his. Needless to say, I tend to incorporate him in a lot, and saw this as a perfect way to do so.

**Is there a personification of Kyuubi in this fic?** _Yes_. –sighs deeply- _Jesus_. _There will be a personification of Kyuubi in this fic_. –sighs again- I've had about a billion people ask me this question after reading my fic for typos. And _yes_ there is going to be a personification of Kyuubi. This is going to be a _long_ fic people. Don't expect everybody to come in all at once. Why? _Because patience is a virtue_.

**Where's Gaara!** Jesus, I've got all the GaaNaru fans whaling on me don't I? _Relax_. We'll get some nice stuff like that in a while. I'm serious. This fic is going to be thirty chapters long at the very least. _People are going to need to have some patience if they want to see Gaara at all!_

-sighs- Naw, you know I wouldn't do that to you.

But relax! Honestly. He'll come around all in good time.

And now that the questions have been answered, _I will be officially announcing some upcoming pairings_.

If you didn't notice already (because you really _are_ that dense…none of you are, right?) there was some implied **LeeSaku** and some more-then-implied **KakaIru** in there. That _will_ continue.

All the classic pairings stated in the series will apply, including one-sided **SakuSasu** and **InoSasu**. That won't go anywhere, I swear.

I've decided to grant **Ruby, Chikyu 4444** a one-sided **AkaHaku** pairing, and the rest of you will get a full-on **HakuZabu** pairing later.

When Kyuubi _does_ come in, he will be in a _violently_ one-sided relationship with a character who will be introduced in the next chapter. She, in turn, will be the subject of a lesbian romance that will come up much, _much_ later in the series.

All other pairings are up in the air. Others will be announced as they're decided.

Another announcement, and then I'll let you go.

I am going to be posting this fic's smut-version on aff(dot)net. It will _not_ be BETA'd there. Why? Because I am reluctant to expose Katana – who, although is very passive with the whole homosexual bit is _not_ the least innocent person in the world – to such things as the hardcore yaoi I like to write.

So, there you are. When I start posting lemon-littered chapters, they will be on aff(dot)net _only_.

-smiles- Alright. Time to set about writing the next chapter! Review review review!

--_Lady Lamb_


	5. And Second Chances

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** BETA'd by Katana-chan. –hugs- The reviews were _amazingly_ flattering this time around… -blushes and fiddles with her shirt- Naa…you made me feel so good about myself. –shuffles- Aa…anooou…I guess I'll write the chapter then… -blushblushblush-

I'd also like to take the time to say that the city Naruto lives in is modeled after San Francisco (if we're not already assuming that it _is_ San Francisco). However, all businesses among other things featured in this story are entirely fictional and for to be used for entertainment purposes only.

I just thought I ought to tell you, even though all of that's included in the disclaimer… -shuffleblush- (Is it just me or am I acting Hinata-ish…?)

Mary of Oranges was the ruler of England (along with her husband William) after the Glorious Revolution.

**Note:** Boy love, because it's good like that.

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2005. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_by The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 4**

**" Apples, empathy,**

**and second chances. "**

The _Mary of Oranges Grocery_ wasn't necessarily the best run of businesses, but it was popular enough and in a good spot off of Market Street that got just the right amount of business. It was small, but that seemed to localize it in a way that people liked. It sold everything and anything – to the point where it was more a convenience store than a grocery – but food was its main merchandising, so no one threw any fits about it.

There obviously wasn't too much money in it because it's structure hadn't been refined since it had opened in the 80's, but that made it cute instead of dingy, and attractive to a crowd of pleasant Muni passengers that stopped in everyday around five o'clock PM. And then, of course, there was the fact that it was maintained as a family business, with the same workers staying on for such long periods of time that they were easily recognized by name.

It was crowded-looking, with huge bins of fruits that were appealing to most anyone that laid eyes on them, both in quality of texture and taste as well as cost. It wasn't so much that the establishment looked nice so much as it had an excellent reputation that was easily upheld, simply because it was the owner's own apathy and loose-regulation that made it so alluring.

Naruto wound his way through crowds, crossing the street to pass in front of a clothing store and a few of the city's homeless, making his way for the grocery, and spotting a few of the people he was looking for almost immediately.

Two small boys were just outside the narrow doorway, one taller than the other in a long scarf and weirdly shaped beanie with holes, and the shorter wearing a bucket hat and blue overalls. Both had heads of dark chocolate-colored hair that hardly matched their mother's at all, and seemed to bursting with energy at the very seams of their bodies. They seemed to be talking quite animatedly, and Naruto – experienced as he was with the two brothers – immediately knew them to be having an argument. He picked snippets of it out of the chattering individuals around him as he neared the store, unheeded.

"Knock it off!"

The taller boy laughed and prodded the other in the ribs, hard. The shorter one yelled and punched him just as hard in the arm.

"_Knock it off_ I said!"

"Don't you hit me!"

"I'll hit you if I wanna hit you!"

The shorter one made to sock him in the arm again but missed badly and knocked over a small pile of oranges which clattered about in their bin. He yelled again, holding his knuckles and the taller one took the oppuritunity to reach forward and grab a fistful of his hair and pull it.

"Ow! Knock it off, Konohamaru!" The shorter one kicked said boy in the stomach and the scuffle went downwards so that the two tangled on the ground, pummeling the living daylights out of one another.

Before Naruto could get there to stop it they had split apart again because Konohamaru had punched his brother in the jaw. The younger one immediately burst into angry tears and came at him, just in time to nearly knock over his main care provider.

"Oh!" She caught herself half through a stumble, barely keeping her balance and spilling the apples she was holding in her apron.

She was of miniature height, probably only around five and a half feet tall, with platinum blonde hair that was highlighted with bronze streaks and wide curves that seemed more condensed because of her short stature. Her eyes were a similar shade of amber and there were three thin black strokes curled across each of her cheeks. She was wearing a white shirt with the and green smock that matched her form-fitting jeans. She seemed genuinely surprised as she pulled the two boys apart, slightly angry that they were arguing but more upset that they were hurting one another.

She pulled the shorter one to one side of her and the taller to the other side of her, maternal instincts splayed across her face in a chastising expression.

"You two! Stop fighting!"

"Yeah, you two. Give your mom a break, won'tcha?"

The woman looked up and smiled delightedly as her blonde cousin walked over, hand in his pockets and understanding smirk cast across his mouth lazily.

"Naruto!"

He smiled back at her, widely, and reached down to pat her children on the heads, ruffling their hair. "How are you Yohko?"

"Wonderful," she said, hugging them to her gently. "I just wish they'd keep their temper for a little more than a second or two." She cast a look of mock-anger at Konohamaru and he sniffed, folding his arms and looking off with a scowl. The other looked bitter, staring at the ground. She laughed daintily, patting his head as well.

"Konohamaru, apologize to your brother."

"I don' wanna…!" he whined, but Yohko's look said it all. He sighed rolling his eyes. "Sorry, Inari."

Inari scowled. Yohko laughed and pet him again. "Oh, buck up. You'll survive." She began to gather up her apples again, stopping to offer one to both of the boys. Konohamaru took his immediately and popped it in his mouth. Inari pouted and held it, folding his arms.

Yohko ushered them both back into the store and watched them scamper off before turning back to Naruto who she immediately leaned up and enveloped in a one-armed hug, keeping the rest of the apples in the fold of her apron. He hugged her back with a smile and helped her put the apples in their respective bins afterwards.

"Has it been like that all day?" he said, grinning at the two boys through the window, where he could see them sword fighting.

Yohko sighed, chuckling lightly. "They're growing boys. I've no doubt they'd much rather be hanging out with children their own age than cooped in the store all say with me."

"They'll go to school next year, won't they?"

Yohko smiled. "I'll manage it somehow."

Naruto nodded and corrected her with a soft smile. "_We'll_ manage it somehow."

She laughed. "Of course."

A co-worker called to her from inside. "Yohko, they're getting into the water pistols again!"

"I'm coming!" Yohko called back immediately, looking distressed and hurrying inside. Naruto chuckled, following her, and helped her shoo the boys away from the plastic guns with which they were so enamored.

Inari and Konohamaru scampered down an alternate aisle and Yohko sighed, heavily, putting her hands on her hips. "Something wrong?" Naruto said, looking over at her with a coy smile. She shook her head in a tired, half-mind-boggled fashion.

"I'm starting to wonder if I'll _ever_ manage to keep up with them. If it's not one thing, it's another."

Naruto shrugged and piled the pistols in a way that was more pleasing to his eye. "They're boys. It's what they do. Besides, you keep 'em in better line than you think."

Yohko sighed and moved forward to remove a pistol from his hand and set about making the display more appealing to _her_. "You're a wonderful person to say so."

He laughed. "You don't believe me?"

"I most certainly do not." She smiled at him and plucked another one from his grasp. "Keep an eye on them until my shift ends."

He scoffed, mocking offense. "Are you asking _me_ to baby sit _your_ children?"

"I didn't ask," she said, dismissively, waving it off and looking over the display again for errors, and - in finding none - proceeding to wipe her hands on her apron.

"And should I refuse?"

"You won't."

"And if I did?"

"I'll be _done_ in an hour and a half." She watched him with a half-smirk, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

"I should think so!" he said, folding his hands over his chest and looking indignant.

She giggled and scooted off.

"I charge!" he yelled after her.

She laughed back at him and disappeared into the back room.

* * *

"Remind me again why we need to stop at the copy place…?" 

Naruto had pretty easily diverted the two young boy's attention to a nearby rack of stickers and Halmark cards upon their entry of the shop around two minutes ago. Yohko had left the apron at her place of employment in exchange for a plain, conservative-looking black jacket with a hood that was cut just above her waist. For most people it would've been a tacky look, but the occupants of Kinko's seemed to think it fit her quite nicely. The way she was leaning over the copier probably didn't help things, but Naruto didn't mind it too much. Yohko would be Yohko, after all. (In all honesty, she probably didn't even notice.)

What he _did_ mind was the fact that she was displaying her 'I'm-going-to-play-dumb'-ness to him quite blatantly. He tapped his foot impatiently, hating the knowledge that she was up to something when he was unaware of what it was.

She shrugged, putting the lid down and punching something in on the keypad. "It's on my way home from work. I need to get this copied." She gestured loosely to the copier. Naruto scowled, knowing that wasn't only reason.

"And I know the look you get when you need to talk to me about something."

Naruto blinked and she smiled at him widely. He shook the shock off after a second. She was the _weirdest_ relative he had, by far. Not that he had any others, but hell, if he'd had any others…

But then, he figured he ought to be used to it by now.

"Yeah…what does going to a copy place have to do with that?"

Yohko shrugged. "I figured that after leaving the boys with you for an hour or so you'd be going into one of your 'hey-look-a-distraction' kind of modes, so it'd be easier to stall them and coax out of _you_ whatever you're wanting to talk about."

Naruto stared, having been so effectively set up it was dumb-founding. Yohko flashed him an innocent smile, which didn't help in making him feel any less belittled.

Ah, well. Complaints could wait.

He checked that the boys were still fiddling with the card rack and then turned back to her.

"Okay," he said, breathing deeply and looking at her squarely in an attempt to officially begin the situation. She'd known him long enough and nodded, acknowledging this fact.

"You know that student I was telling you about, right?"

"The 'stick-up-his-ass' one?" He nodded and so did she. "Yes, I remember. Last time he was giving you a lot of trouble, wasn't he?"

"Then _and_ now," Naruto said with frustration, bringing his briefcase up off of the ground and setting it on one of the provided countertops. "I told you I was giving a test today, didn't I?" She nodded as he fished around in the pocket of his coat. "Alright, good. With that in mind, I'm going to tell you what you _don't_ know, which is this: I just came from a meeting with Kakashi after giving Uchiha a detention."

Yohko didn't pry, knowing he was taking this somewhere that probably wouldn't entail the means for giving Uchiha the detention, but figured she might atleast ask _one_ of the many questions that was biting at her. "Why would that be Kakashi's concern…?"

"Well, I figured it was because Uchiha was on the football team, at first, but that's not why." He found what he was looking for in his pocket and looked satisfied, pulling it out with his own sort of flourish. Yohko blinked.

"Kakashi helped me _assign_ those detentions, so I'm not sure why I would assume he would ask me to recant some of them into lesser things just because it was only football players receiving them. I was so mad I probably didn't notice, which was kinda thoughtless on my part…" He uncrumpled the folded paper, rubbing out the crinkles by moving it back and forth across the counter's edge. "But he gave me _this_ of all things. Told me they'd been passing it around the locker room."

Naruto unfolded it completely and handed it to her, immediately diving for the briefcase and flicking the clips open. He already knew her reaction before he glanced at her, and it was exactly what his had been. She was staring at it as a devout Roman Catholic priest stares at a Satanist; as if it might jump up and rip chunks of her flesh from their rightful places.

She spoke quietly after a while. "How did they get ahold of this…?"

"I don't have the _foggiest_ idea." He rifled through the papers, eyes hard. "But that's not what shocked me so much. I've had cheaters before, and I've always caught them in the end, but…" He finally drew out the one that caught his eyes, silently bidding it spontaneously combust.

"But…?" Yohko prompted him, looking up from the one she was holding.

"Well, I always have the kids hand their papers in alphabetically, you know, so that it'll be easier to correct later. I don't always grade 'em that way but I like to play with their heads. Anyway, I collected first period's tests, and Uchiha's name is last, so I got a good look at it before I put them away…take a look." He offered it to her and she took it, eyes doubling in size.

Naruto watched her, putting his hands in his pockets.

She stared.

"Naruto, this is impossible."

"I thought so too."

"No, Naruto…_impossible_…these…these look _exactly_ the same." She stared at it. Not even just the words, but even the style of the handwriting. "Naruto, it's even written in exactly the same way…"

"I know." Naruto nodded, looking grim.

"But…" Yohko looked at the original piece of paper she had received, looking almost mind-boggled. She could only distinguish it from the other one because of it's wrinkles from being in Naruto's pocket, and it was almost scary. They were _exact_ copies of one another. "…Naruto…this isn't Uchiha's handwriting though, is it…?" She gestured to the folded test in order to indicate which one she was talking about.

Naruto nodded, taking it from her. "I know. That was the creepiest part."

Yohko looked over the flawless page now in her hands. "Then this…isn't his handwriting either, is it?"

Naruto shook his head. "He writes like a type writer. Obviously it doesn't resemble _this_—" he gestured to the text on the paper "—at all. Which is the weirdest thing. I can understand remembering all of the answers _maybe_ but making it look _exactly_ the same as the cheat sheet? It's _inconceivable_."

Yohko nodded. "Is it possible he got someone to write it for him...?" Her voice was unbelieving, as if she had been ready to withdraw the statement as soon as she'd said it.

Naruto shook his head. "You know I keep a closer eye on them than that. Besides, it'd have to be the same person who wrote this one," he held up the cheatsheet, "and even then it'd look _somewhat_ different, even if it _was_ the same person."

Yohko looked it over, her eyes deep and analyzing. "It's a really long test, too…it's almost as if…"

Her voice died suddenly as she seemed to realize something unconventional. Her eyes went wide again and Naruto watched her. "What?" he asked, blinking.

Yohko kept her eyes on the paper, her voice halting as if she was thinking very hard about something. "Naruto…tell me if I'm wrong…but…do I recall correctly…you saying something about this boy sounding just like a dictionary in one of his responses during an assignment…? To the point where you could find – _did _find – the same words _written_ in the dictionary?"

Naruto blinked. "Yeah…"

Yohko nodded slowly. "And he writes like a type writer…?"

Naruto nodded. "Almost exactly…but why—"

"Because if what I'm thinking is true, this may not be as far-fetched as it seems."

Naruto blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean…well, doesn't this look like a _photocopy_ of what the cheat sheet looked like?"

Naruto nodded again, uncertainty and curiosity filling him.

"But we know this was hand-written by Uchiha, even though the cheat sheet _wasn't_, don't we? I mean, I know how much attention you pay when you give tests." Yohko looked up at him for confirmation that he was listening and he nodded for her to continue.

"Well, Naruto…putting two and two together…I just wonder…"

"Wonder what?" The impatience jumped out of his mouth before he could prevent it. He was _dying_ to know what was going on in Yohko's head. The thing that tugged at the back of his throat was childish and desperate. '_C'mon!_' it screamed. '_Tell me! Tell me!_'

"What if Uchiha-san has an eidetic memory?"

Naruto stared at her.

"A…a what?"

"An eidetic…" she paused, substituting the psychological term for street words. "A _photographic_ memory, I mean."

He stared. "An eidetic memory…?"

Yohko nodded. "Think about it. What if his writing isn't just _similar_ to a type writer's print…? What if the dictionary definition wasn't just a coincidence…? What if…it actually _is_ type writer printing? And the definition is one he remembers from having read it somewhere? It wouldn't have to be more than that one time…if he saw it _once_ it would be enough, wouldn't it?

"So, what if he caught more than a glimpse of that sheet in the locker room during practice this morning? What if, with his eidetic memory, all he had to do was stare at it for a few moments and then it was implanted in his brain forever? Then, all he'd have to do in order to pass your test was copy it down _exactly_ the way he saw it—"

"Other person's handwriting and all."

Naruto and Yohko shared a long, long look and the teacher comprehended. Sometimes, all it took was a little contortionism by another person to make a thought that had – until that point – been so elusive that it was unfathomable…sometimes all it took was another view to make them make perfect sense. But now that he looked at in the way Yohko had, it was gloriously clear.

Uchiha Sasuke had an eidetic memory.

It made perfect sense now.

Yohko nodded and he nodded too, the silence between them acknowledgement enough.

'_My God, you're right,_' it said. '_You're so, so right._'

The sound of a page printing out of the copy machine brought Naruto back into life and he hurried onward.

"I don't understand though. The dictionary phrases looked like his handwriting…" Comparing the two, he hadn't picked up on this immediately because it didn't look traced. Sasuke's handwriting on that line had looked the same as on any other, and was only similar to the dictionary's font. So… "Why wouldn't he have written _this_ in his own handwriting too?"

Actually, he realized as the words formed on Yohko's lips, he knew the answer. He knew it very well, and it was the reason he harbored such dislike for the Uchiha in the first place.

"Well…I can't be sure of course, but from all that you've told me…he doesn't really care for your class all that much, am I right?"

Naruto nodded, stomach sinking. It was true then.

"Then maybe he just doesn't care enough to even try to make it look like his own handwriting. He simply assumes you'll buy it enough to pass him so…so he doesn't even have to try."

The truth stung like a bitch.

Naruto scowled, folding his arms. "I'll just make sure he _doesn't_ then. For all intents and purposes, I was going to fail him already, the minute I saw this."

_But the not-even-trying part just pisses me off_.

Yohko immediately shook her head, fiercely, taking his clenched hand with a chastising expression. "Don't you go being childish, Naruto. Now don't tense up like that. Relax and listen to me. That's what you wanted, right? My advice?"

Naruto simmered, still brooding, but did as she said, loosening himself. "Alright. Go on."

"Now listen. All this proves is the fact that you have _got_ to stop playing these games at his level! He's a _fourteen_-year-old, Naruto. You're ten years older! Act like it!"

Naruto frowned and looked off. The sun was setting early tonight, it seemed, and the orange light flashed in his eyes, making him squint for a second. He could feel Yohko's eyes on him as his lips tightened.

"He doesn't respect me at all, does he?"

Yohko looked at him in an almost piteous fashion, wringing her hands together in a want, a _need_ to help him with his problems. Her voice was quiet, sincere, when she spoke.

"Well, then, you've got to start thinking about reasons for that. Whether he likes you or not, you've _got_ to earn his respect somehow. And playing his games _aren't_ going to cut it. And do you know why that is? It's because playing the games he sets up for you makes _him_ the one in charge, and it's just what he wants you to do."

"So!" Naruto's frustration flared unpleasantly. "What am I _supposed _to do!"

Yohko was on him quicker than lightning. "Don't you get petulant with me. This is _exactly_ what I'm talking about. He's picking you apart Naruto. He's figured out what annoys you and he's pushing your buttons. He's trying to manipulate you into playing his games so he can prove that you don't _deserve_ his respect."

"So what do I do?"

"I'll _tell_ you what you do. You go ahead and play his games. But you start playing like a teacher rather than playing like a high-schooler."

* * *

"…So, looking at these primary sources, we can determine _what_ about the purposes of the Virginia-bound passengers of 1634, versus the New England-bound passengers of 1634?" Naruto looked out into the waving hands and gestured. "Chouji?" 

"That the New English guys were older?"

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, and other than the fact that I question 'New English' existing as a label, what did that _mean_ in comparison?"

Chouji faltered. "Um…"

Another waving hand caught Naruto's eye. "Kiba?"

"That the Virginians didn't like children?"

"Well, I don't think that was a factor in their not bringing any." He looked around, almost desperately. "Oh, c'mon guys! Just answer me this question and then you can go!"

Haku's hand was steady in the air where it was towards the back. Naruto spoke the boy's name and gestured. _C'mon, c'mon, help me out, Haku…_

The boy looked slightly unsure, but spoke clearly. "Well, wouldn't it suggest that the passengers bound for Virginia were more interested in _building_ a colony, rather than traveling to one that already existed, as the data suggests for the New Englanders?"

"_Yes_!" Naruto yelled, bringing his class to attention. "That it is _exactly_ right. Props to you Haku." He gave his student a wide smile and a thumbs up. "Does everyone understand that, now? Who can explain Haku's reasoning for that belief?"

Akamaru's palm was like a billboard, and her enthusiasm was lifting her out of her chair.

"Akamaru!" he said, practically shouting, grin so wide it hurt.

"Because you needed strong young people to build a colony, and just lots of people in general to maintain one!"

"And there you are! Pack up!"

He glanced at the clock as the shuffle and scraping began. Two minutes until the bell. He yawned openly and stretched the muscles of his shoulders. He readied himself, looking at the clock again, reaching into the back of his mind and reeling out all that Yohko had advised him as well as anything else he might think he could use to prepare himself for this.

Nothing graced him with its presence. He gave up the cause without much fight.

Somehow, something in him was nervous. But he was Uzumaki Naruto and that wasn't something he was even _close_ to acknowledging, or even close to really considering as a threat to his hardly maintained composure. He was a teacher, and, dammit, the world was going to know it.

And that world unfortunately contained Uchiha Sasuke. So, dammit, he was going to have to know too.

The bell went off and somehow, Naruto's brain cued up his mouth at last, above the straining squeaks of chairs being scooted out from under desks and backsides and the like.

"Uchiha Sasuke! Stick by after class, I want to talk to you."

A few of the students gawked, sending him hesitant looks as they were buffeted along by their own ignorant classmates. They blinked, unbelieving, at him. He ignored them and they were eventually swept out with the tide, like driftwood, into the hall.

The Uchiha God himself stopped midway down the row of desks, his bookbag on his shoulder, to stare at their blonde benefactor coldly. Naruto smiled back at him in a meaninglessly innocent fashion as the room emptied.

Sasuke walked forward, the muscles in his face seeming more taut than usual, as if he was straining to keep his distaste in line with his stoic mannerisms.

"I'll be late for second period," he said simply, as if it was the only thing required of him to state before he could go.

Naruto's meaningless smile broadened. "I'll write you a pass. This won't take long, anyway."

_You're not worming your way out of this, Uchiha._

Said boy's eyes hardened slightly in what Naruto could pick - quite easily - out of a crowd as one of the most severe of contempts. It was there, and Naruto knew the student was going to engage. He knew already that this was a game that he was going to win.

It made him smile in a cruel, sadistic sort of way.

He drew his own chair out from under the oak wood of his desk and sat down in it, gesturing to hard backed one sitting to the side of the room. Sasuke took the hint and dragged it over in front of his teacher. Naruto nodded to him, folding his arms and crossing one leg over the other simultaneously.

"Sit, won't you?"

Sasuke did so, remaining as expressionless as he seemed to be able to muster. There was a small piece of harldy-comfortable silence between them. Naruto felt like a vampire. For some reason, that concept didn't entirely bother him as much as he later felt it should have.

It didn't occur to him for a long while that he was playing a game of predator versus prey.

The Uchiha interrupted the silence at long last. "If you'll excuse my saying so, _sensei_..." Naruto noticed the pause in his voice before he added the honorific. "...I'll be serving detention later today. Can this wait?"

"If I thought it could _Uchiha-san_," Naruto said, cold smile flashing brightly as he spoke Uchiha's title with the same air, "I certainly would have waited until then." _And you'll be serving detention for a whole lot longer than just one day; don't you dare think otherwise._

The Uchiha's lips tightened. Naruto smirked and reached for his briefcase, chuckling in a way only he could hear as he withdrew from it a paper that he had - over the course of yesterday and today - become _very_ familiar with. He lifted it with two fingers to set it on the desk between the two of them, looking into Sasuke's dark eyes.

"I'm sure you recognize this, don't you?"

Sasuke looked ready to strangle something. His voice was a _very_ forced calm.

"I do, sensei."

Naruto smiled at him coolly and rested on finger on top of the mark that was circled at the top, in red.

"And I'm also sure you understand what this percentage means, don't you?"

Sasuke stared at it, as if willing it to spontaneously combust with all of his being.

_0. F._

He nodded curtly after a while. "I understand what it means, sensei."

Naruto smiled and leaned closer to him to more closely survey his behavior. "And do you understand why you got it?"

Sasuke looked back at up at him, exterior icy, as if daring him to any further invade his personal space.

"Not at all."

_Good_.

It took all of Naruto's good will towards men to keep from speaking his mind. He recalled Yohko's warnings to not completely abandon his empathetic abilities, even with people he had judged (as he so rarely judged anyone) as an utter and complete asshole that he wanted to hurt in any way he could.

"_It's one of your old attention-grabbing tactics springing to life, is all. Just keep your cool, Naruto._"

He sighed quietly to himself, recalling the words and the hug she'd given him along with a parting kiss on the cheek. He had to focus. He had to keep his cool and he had to make sure he didn't let his instincts take complete hold of him now or ever again with this boy.

It was never good when he let his instincts take control of how he dealt with people.

"Well," he said, arms still crossed over his chest. "Allow me to explain to you, then, why you've failed that test. It's pretty simple."

Sasuke looked as if he'd rather rip his own heart from his ribs and devour it than be spoken to in this fashion. Naruto ignored him.

"I don't appreciate cheaters. That's why."

Sasuke blinked and Naruto smiled, knowing he'd _finally_ caught the boy off his guard. He fished in his pocket and brought out the folded cheatsheet he so abhored.

"I spoke to Kakashi after school yesterday. He said he found a few morons bouncing around with this in the locker room after morning practice." He dangled it to the side of his face. Sasuke was glaring daggers. "It's funny, you know." He smiled. "I don't recall telling _anyone_ that there was going to be a test in this class. You didn't even know, until you got ahold of this, did you? And behold..." Naruto peered over Sasuke's test another time before again adjoining their eyes. "...not a single incorrect problem on your part. That's amazing, don't you agree?

"Not a single problem in your handwriting, either."

Sasuke seemed even more offgaurd with this one but recovered more quickly. Naruto smiled at him.

"It's funny. I wouldn't have had anything more than suspicion to go off of if Kakashin hadn't caught you guys." It was a cruel statement. Mocking.

_You should've been more careful going through the metal detector, my good Sir Bin Ladin_.

Sasuke's mouth was tight. There was recognition in the eyes of both males. Acknowledgement.

_You know, then._

_Yes, I do._

_This might have the ability to make my life very unpleasant, then._

_Yes, I suppose it might. _

The boy nodded, finally. "I understand, sensei."

"You understand the reason you failed, Uchiha-san." _You hardly **understand** all that I have to tell you._

The Uchiha nodded again quietly, knowing from the tone of Naruto's voice that he was hardly allowed to go. "I do," he said again, awaiting whatever misfortune this could possibly hold.

Naruto nodded as well, smiling at him. "Good. There is something I'm afraid you _don't_ understand, however. Two things, as it were."

He pointed to the circled pinnacle of failure on the Uchiha's paper.

"One thing is the fact that this test is twenty-five percent of your coming semester grade in my class."

Sasuke stared, as close to gaping as Naruto knew he could get.

"There is a reason I do not reveal to students when my tests are going to be, Uchiha-san. They are few and far between, which, for one thing, makes it so that anyone in my class should be paying apt attention at all times. For another thing, it makes them much more weighted, so it always makes it near impossible to recover from screwing up on one of them.

"It gives me a way of semi-vicious revenge on anybody who decides to goof off in my class."

Sasuke stared at him and Naruto's smirk widened.

"It's very true that I dislike grading, of course," he said, "so that may factor in as well. But, as I'm sure you've figured out now, smart as you are, Uchiha-san,

"I hate being disrespected more than anything in the world."

There was a small silence between them. Sasuke looked to be in a state of alter-personality shock and anger.

"Also, smart as you are, I'm sure you can figure out that with over 25 deducted from your grade in this class, the best you can hope to get is a C."

Sasuke's muscles seemed to tense in revulsion. Naruto leaned forward, eyes dead serious.

"And from what I guess about you, Sasuke," he said, voice dead-quiet and all honorifics abandoned as to make a greater impression on his 'victim', "that would _hardly_ be acceptible, wouldn't it?"

The boy shivered, disgusted with his circumstances. Naruto pulled back.

"The second thing I think you should understand is what I'm going to force you to do to make certain that that does _not_ happen."

Sasuke looked up. His eyes were dark. Cold. Brooding. Naruto didn't flinch in the least.

Instead, he flashed a smile of similar properties.

"I know you don't like me, Uchiha-san. And I notice that you don't try at all to make me the least bit unsure of that fact. You don't put any effort into this class."

His eyes curled upwards in happy crecents.

"Unfortunately, that might get you through every other academic course for the rest of your life, but it will _not_ get you through mine. I, as of now, have no real qualms about failing you."

Sasuke's eyes burned, dagger-like, speaking for him.

_Why **don't you** then?_

Naruto continued to beam at him. "I'm a strong believer in second chances, though, as it were. So here's what I'm going to do."

_Listen closely. This is your last chance to appease me._

"Every day of the detentions you have been allotted, you will come straight here after school for every day that you attend. For every day that you do not attend, you'll be staying with me another day longer. Three hours you're going to spend with me, every day. Under my supervision, you're going to do every assignment I give you to the best of your ability. You're going to turn it in. You're going to get an A on it. If you do not get an A on it you're going to do it over. You're going to participate actively in class. You're going to pretend to respect me.

"And if you do that for an entire month, I'll omit the test score from your grade."

Sasuke stared at him.

"After-school tutoring. Is that what you're proposing?"

"I'm more than proposing, Uchiha-san. But yes, I suppose you could call it that."

The boy nodded slowly, eyes fiery beneath a subtle exterior.

"Understood, sensei."

Naruto nodded and handed him the pass, pre-written and signed. "Wonderful."

Sasuke stood and made for the door. Hatred practically radiated off of him as he went out into the hallway and the door shut hard behind him. Naruto watched it for a long time before sighing heavily, and raising from his chair, folding his arms behind his head.

His stomach hurt. That couldn't have made him...nervous...?

...No. He shook his head, sighing again. He was just delirious, that was all.

And somehow, the thought of being partially stark raving mad was more comforting than being nervous about talking to Uchiha Sasuke would have been.

He had to deal with the boy twice a day now, by his own rules.

Jesus, this year was going to be a very, _very_ long one.

* * *

**End Chapter 04**

God, that took forever. -weeps- It's so sad. The one chapter I've been anticipating the longest took the longest to write...I'm so frustrated. It was really hard to make Naruto as mean as I'd intended and still keep him in character. As it were, I don't think I did so too well. He kept reminding me of Tsuzuki when he was possessed by Sagatanasu.

It was, like, so not okay. -shudders-

Anyway, I'm acreditting it to what Naruto's been through as he's grown into an adult… -ahem- I mean, he's kind of like that as a kid, but not as much as he needed to be in this scene...so I matured him a little more than usual. I'm so sorry for the OOC -ness, but I couldn't find any other way to get it done...

This chapter kind of marks the whole ball as it gets rolling, which is good. I've got a BETA, the fic has fans (OMIGOD), the SasuNaru part of the plot (and the real plot itself) is going to start right on up, and we're almost to the fifth chapter. Yay for that. -smiles softly-

And we all know Naruto's age now. -smiles- Twenty-four. And we're assuming he got this job the _minute_ he graduated the teaching achademy...which is a story we'll save for a different day, I suppose.

Thankyou all for your kind reviews, once again! I'm so grateful, I can't even tell you...I've even got fans of it on my high school campus. A huge box of love to you guys, and a special one with a bow to Amy. I have never been more flattered.

I'm going to start writing the fifth chapter now...wish me luck. -death-

--_Lady Lamb_


	6. Too Often

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** Maa…I'm…so…frustrated! Yes, if you think this chapter took a long time, I must agree, and profusely apologize. The longer I let it sit, the less timely my muse becomes. This one chapter took a terribly long time to start, and was re-written no less than four times, from scratch. It really was very hard to do, on my part, and I really apologize because it's really not your fault. I love you all so much…

**Note:** Got yaoi?

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2005. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_by The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 5**

**" Too much, too little,**

**and too often. "**

Naruto sat still. He was pensive at this hour, for some reason. The room was cold for it being October. He had always liked October, as it were, when the cold brisk winds began to gallop through the streets after a few prolonged weeks of absence, and the fog drifted in thickly off of the bay. The window was open because he liked it as much as he did, because he liked how clear the air smelled at this time of year. It was crisp and beautifully cleansing, and it invigorated his soul instead of his body, which left him with an almost-alien aftertaste of being sterile the inside out. He loved that taste.

The shades were half open and he could see the lights gleaming out from behind the fog. The window panes were ice cold to the touch but steamed up whenever his fingertips would ghost over them ever-so experimentally. He rubbed at his arms in an absent way, as if to warm them. His eyes and face indicated his being gone as simply as anything, blank as they were.

He looked back in on himself after a while, breathing in deeply and relishing the October fragrance that filled him. He felt weirdly empty. Certainly, he had always felt haunted, fraudulent. Shit, he'd even go so far as to call some of his so-called friends strangers for all they knew of him, so far as to call himself hopeless, manic, pathetic and deceptive. But emptiness was rarely something he acknowledged feeling, even if he couldn't really remember what it was like to feel "whole".

He moved his hands again and wiggled out of his now-warm seat on his bed. The sheets rustled like bird's wings beneath him and he blinked, head panging uncomfortably as he experienced abrupt stop of momentum in his stomach, as if he'd just withdrawn from a careening free fall. He massaged his stomach, grimacing. He hated being swept out of a daze like that, even if it was accidental. He breathed again, sighing more deeply than anything else. Reverie was a sad thing to lose at eleven o'clock in the evening.

He tempted to rise, but too much dreaded the feeling of loss if he were to leave the warmth of his bed and walk into the barren nothingness that co-inhabited his small flat. Instead, he relaxed his back in disregard of the papers he barely missed, letting his head lie on the soft pillow. He sighed again, tiredness settling into the groves of him, and he glanced over at what he had already graded. They all had the same name printed perfectly on the given line, and he ached with the knowledge of it.

_Uchiha Sasuke._

He swatted at the boy's presence as it entered the back of his brain. He pushed it back, shoved at it. But it was persistent, ever existing. He shivered, groaned and put an arm over his eyes out of distress. So many papers. So many failed attempts at making the boy listen to him. Why wouldn't the boy listen to him?

_Uchiha Sasuke._

The presence pressed into the creases of his mind. He hated it. He hated it with a passion. But he second guessed himself. He second guessed that hatred. He second guessed it constantly. He second guessed it just as everyone else did when he would talk to them about it. He knew the way they looked at him. He knew how emphatic he was, how frustrated and tired and fed-up. He knew they knew it too. He knew they believed him. But he knew that they had started to second guess it after a while. He knew they were right too.

Certainly, Uzumaki Naruto got riled. Certainly he did, there was no debating that. His moods had the swinging tendencies of a metronome, after all. But rarely did he ever get hung up over things. He did get hung up over the larger stuff: whether he was a good teacher; whether he was taking his pills; whether Yohko was retaining the small bit of sanity she had left; whether the both of them were still as far away and as well hidden from the Ghosts as they could manage. But to get so hung up over a straight-A student who simply didn't try too hard to achieve what he did? It just wasn't like Naruto to do that. It wasn't like him at all.

And yet, that being said, here they were, with Naruto lounging on his own bed which was, consequently, scattered with the materialization of that straight-A student. Here they were, at an impasse that could have been so easily avoided if Naruto had simply been man enough to let it go.

But then, Naruto had always been one to blame himself without recanting his actions. He blamed himself and no one else for all the mess this whole thing had become, but he never once considered stopping what it was that made him blame himself. No. If he was going to be hung up, he was going to be hung up and that was the end of it. His mouth tightened in set resolve. No, he wasn't giving up. Something would come of this. Some _would_ come of this. And until it came, Naruto was determined to continue with his current course of action.

_Uchiha Sasuke._

Well…maybe with a few improvements on design. But he could manage that without quitting. Quitting was out of the question and he'd known it before he started. He let his arm fall back again to lie near its bother, tucked beneath his neck. No, he didn't quit. He'd quit too many things. Let the Ghosts convince him that quitting was alright if you destroyed all evidence that you'd ever started in the first place.

He'd never liked doing that before, and he didn't do things that he didn't like. Or, atleast, that didn't have a relatively beneficial point. This had _more_ than a _relatively_ beneficial points. So, upon that standing he was doubtless. He knew his intentions as well as anyone, and he knew how much he wanted to maintain them. He fully intended to. He was going to make Sasuke adhere to the guidelines he had set.

Although, from the looks of it, that was going to be _extremely_ difficult.

He lay in silent thought for a long while before the phone shocked him out of his stillness. It rang out from where it was perched against its cradle on the desk adjacent to him and he rose with the first cry that echoed through him and the apartment. It was a forlorn, almost terrifying sound after such a long spell of quiet. He rose from the bed at last, without a backwards glance and looked at the caller ID, pressing the '_talk_' button and putting it to his ear as soon as the number registered.

"Hey." Familiarity entered his soft, exhausted voice. He was happy to be off of the bed, even if his shirt felt abnormally cold.

"I'm bringing over some ramen."

"Why?" It was a weird question, but Naruto felt he had a reason to know. Not that he'd ever deny her entry into his house. In fact, there was not one occasion he could think of where he wouldn't welcome her as happily as ever. Yohko acted as one of his few secular attachments to the world, after all.

"Because you looked troubled today." It seemed like a simple answer to a simple question. But the concern behind it filtered through. It always did. Naruto chuckled to himself, remembering her eyes on him earlier at Dolores Park. She'd known for hours, then, and – knowing Yohko as well as he did – she'd probably been fretting over what to do about it for all that time.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm coming over."

"It's almost midnight, Yohko."

"It doesn't matter, I said."

"I heard what you said Yohko, but honestly, you can't be wandering around the city right now." He could've taken it further and said something hurtful but he didn't. She understood his subtleties, what he was driving at. A sigh echoed against his ear and he rubbed at the ring on his finger.

"I want to see you, though."

He could hear what she was driving at too. She would do anything to make him feel better. She missed him. She never liked leaving him, and she liked it even less when her children were asleep and he had left her with only an almost bitter smile with which to soothe herself.

He glanced at the clock again.

"Yohko, I'll be okay. Honestly."

He could hear how much she wanted to hug him. How much she wanted to hold him in her arms and make him feel better. How much she wanted to let him drown in all the unconditional love she happily provided him with.

He hoped she could hear how much he wanted that too. But safety came first and they both knew it.

They spoke for a few more minutes before he could convince her that he would survive a few more hours until she would be able to see him again. He knew she had already been convinced – no meant no to her, no matter how anyone said it – but he felt like letting her down gently. He wanted to see her. He really did. But he was just going to have to wait a while.

She sighed, knowingly, on the other end. "I'm just worried. You seem upset, and I…" Naruto, disquieted by her concern nodded softly, a bad habit of his. He nodded even though it was a phone and she couldn't hear him. But she stopped, seeming to pick up on it all the same. She tended to pick up on almost everything.

"I just really want to help you," she breathed at last. He shifted his legs uncomfortably. He hated letting Yohko down. He hated it more than any other feeling in the world, even more than he hated letting himself down. He felt like he constantly betrayed her love of him. He knew how badly she wanted to help him. He wanted the same for her.

But he just couldn't, not right now.

"I know, Yohko."

She sighed, sadly. He felt like collapsing in on himself.

"Alright," she said. He could feel her embrace him with her words, embrace him tightly. He returned it to the best of his ability, knowing he would never be able to convey as much through words and his voice as she could. He had always blamed that on the fact that she was such a talented singer, but at times like this he got the feeling that it was reversed – that instead of the singing giving her the ability to express so much through her voice alone, it was the other way around.

"Aishiteru, Yohko."

"Aishiteru, Naruto."

They hung up simultaneously, with that being their goodbye instead of something simpler. It was an old habitual practice of theirs to leave by saying that you loved them, if that was really the case. There was false promise in everything else, too much to say otherwise. Atleast 'I love you' communicated to the other person how much was left unsaid by this mis-happening.

They said it in their native Japanese, too. It was angel speak, between them, a language they kept pure and honest by never using it on an occasion that did not demand sincerity. Sure, Naruto spoke Japanese on a regular basis. In fact, Yohko's English was much better than his, which was predictable judging on their professional. But Naruto never said those words in Japanese if he didn't mean it. He noticed that Americans dallied around with them, said them too much, too often, when they didn't really mean it. In that respect, the terms had become diluted and useless. 'I love you' didn't mean that much if you said it in English.

But 'aishiteru' was sacred. You only said it when you really, truly meant it.

He sighed and cracked his neck, massaging his back, realizing how tired he was. He longed to sleep. Sleep was, after all, the best drug; the best way to drown out everything. If you were unconscious, you were more disconnected from the world then anything like cocaine or heroine could make you. He sighed and barely resisted the temptation to simply swipe all of the papers off of his bed and onto the floor, gathering them up in a messy stack and tossing them half-heartedly on the desk. He threw the covers back, flopped down and smothered himself with them, burying his nose in the sheets and closing his eyes.

It skimmed the surface of his mind that he hadn't yet taken his medication, but he shoved that away, onto the back burner, and was gone nearly immediately.

* * *

_He touched his cheeks gingerly, staring at the caskets. They weren't open which made him happy. He didn't want to have to see what he already knew was inside. He was nine years old and he wasn't stupid. He knew what a funeral was, and he knew why this one was being held. _

_He touched the oak of each box simultaneously and the tears streamed down with more force. He was nine years old. Nine-year-olds didn't cry, Daddy had always told him with a big smile. Nine-year-olds didn't cry, and boys didn't cry either._

_Those sentiments just made him cry harder._

_The police didn't think he had seen. They thought that just because he was only nine, he couldn't understand what was going on when he had come around the bend and frozen because there was an ambulance outside his house. They didn't think he had seen all the blood that had covered the road and the sidewalk._

_They didn't think he had seen the bullet wound through his father's chest as they loaded him and his young wife into the back of that car on stretchers. But he had. And he understood what that meant, even if what it meant didn't affect him the same way it would a grown man._

_Somebody had shot his parents. And that meant his parents were dead._

_He touched his cheeks again, a convulsing sob racking his small body. Yohko's long blonde hair hung over both of their shoulders as she sighed softly, and lifted him up into her arms, hugging him close to her. He snuggled into her neck and she kissed his ear gently._

"_Oh, don't cry," she said softly, petting his back. "It'll be alright." She walked with him on her hip, as she used to when they were younger. "Don't cry. I promise it will be alright. I'm here, don't worry. I'm not going anywhere…"_

"_No…" he whimpered, clinging to her and burying his face against her collarbone. "You'll die too…you'll die too…I don't want you to die…"_

_She petted his back soothingly. "I won't die…I promise I won't die, Naruto…"_

"_You promise…?" He looked up into her eyes, vision blurred by tears. "You promise you won't leave me…?"_

_She kissed his forehead and smiled. "I promise. I'll never leave you, Naruto."_

_He nuzzled against her, gone quiet again. She petted him, still, hips swaying ever so gently, as she went around in a small circle. "Do you want to go out on the lake…?" she said finally. He nodded, and she did not let go, walking past the caskets and opening a door behind them._

_The empty sky of gray above hardly reflected off of the water, which was clear as glass. Small, prickly looking plants of questionable origin grew up in random places, and there was a soft, cool breeze. There was no smell and few colors to greet them, but Naruto didn't mind and huddled in against Yohko's warmth. _

_It left him suddenly, however, as he was placed upon the water, ripples going out from beneath his feet. He looked up to protest but Yohko had stayed where she was, not running or leaving him, just as she had promised. She smiled and took his hand and he smiled too. Hand-in-hand they walked out on the surface of the water effortlessly, going out to the very edge past long rows of black, leafless trees to stare over the edge of a cliff. Yohko was humming something very pretty and Naruto smiled up at her, liking it._

_Suddenly, something about the water caught his eye, and his gaze darted downwards. He bent down on hands and knees, pressing his hands to the cold – yet solid – liquid surface below him, trying to see better. It took a while to materialize before him, but at last he could see it clearly._

_The thousands of lights of a vast citadel were spread out beneath him. They glittered and shone, illuminating the distant buildings and the town's miniature inhabitants. There were tall towers and more humble looking abodes, huge parks of beautiful green grass and wide magnolia trees, restaurants and hotels. Little buses rumbled along familiar routes and cars and trucks zoomed hither and thither. Naruto's smile widened until he was grinning ear to ear down at a small man who was walking his dog along one of the skinny sidewalks. _

_He reached up and tugged at his cousin's coat, wanting her to see it. "Yohko," he said. "Yohko, Yohko, look. Look at the water. Look."_

_She turned, a question in her eyes, and came over to sit on her legs beside him, looking down at the city beneath the water. She laughed and looked over at him._

"_It's pretty, isn't it?"_

"_Yeah!" he said, giggling. They laughed together, looking through the surface of the water and pointing out people and other details. Naruto forgot about the funeral easily, only vaguely recalling it when they saw a little hearse rolling down the avenue. Even then he only really remembered for a few seconds, brushing it off as soon as he noticed something else. He felt like Alice peering down through her looking glass at this tiny little city, and he found things pretty and wondrous in ways he never had before._

_The cry of a raven disrupted everything._

_He looked up from laughing, to see it in one of the trees they had passed earlier. It crowed again and he scowled. It left its perch on wide swooping wings of ebony to land on the water, cawing. The scenery seemed darker, all of a sudden. He scowled at the bird, angry with it for having ruined his good time. He reached out with a hand, waving back and forth, trying to usher it away. It didn't move._

"_Go away," he said, scowling. "Go."_

_The bird hopped closer. His temper flared. He reached out and pushed at its chest angrily. "Go!" he said, more forcefully. "Go away!" It ignored the push and actually hopped over his hand, and even closer to him._

_Naruto lost it, lashing out his arm with all intent to give it a hard whack. "Go away!" he yelled, face fearsome. "Go **away**!"_

_He barely missed the raven as it jumped into the air. He almost smiled in triumph as it floated upwards, only to notice that just as easily as it had risen it had begun to dive downwards. He cried out and leapt back just in time, and the bird vanished into the water._

_Naruto stared after it, perplexed. The few ripples that had been produced from its entry had gone as soon as they had appeared. It was strange he thought. Didn't things like that make a splash…?_

_He clambered over on hands and knees, looking down. A shadow drifting lazily about over the city caught his eyes and he squinted to see it better. He crouched further down, pressing his nose to the surface of the water and half-wanting to go down after it, just to see that he had not imagined it coming. _

_He was met face to face not with his own reflection, but with the face of Uchiha Sasuke._

_The two stared at one another. Naruto was so surprised he considered drawing back, and was even more surprised when he realized that he could not. Something was keeping his body where it was. He looked to his spread fingertips and noticed that they were touching those of the boy beneath him. Somehow that made it make sense that he was no longer in control of his own movements._

"_What are you looking at?"_

_The Uchiha's voice called his attention back and he stared back down at him through the water. It surprised him with its sullenness, its tired air. The raven's eyes were bottomless, sucking him in, relaxed and yet exhausted at the same time, guarded against everyone. Naruto shook his head vaguely, not knowing what to say._

_Slowly, the Uchiha brought their right hands apart, breaking the spell that seemed to be locking them in the same motion. Wet fingertips slid out of the water to rest softly on Naruto's cheek. The teacher – who realized that he was nine years old no longer – stared down at him, stunned and unmoving._

"_Were you looking…at me…?"_

_The water surrounding the extended hand seemed to break suddenly, shattered like a breaking mirror. The cracks exploded outwards, spreading everywhere, and Naruto was reminded of the time he had fallen through the ice at a river in a winter long past. The water that had seemed so calm sprung up, enveloping him, dragging him down. He bucked and twisted automatically, yelling, trying to get away. Something kept him down, though. He looked about frantically and met Sasuke's eyes, which seemed to have been watching him all along. He panicked, realizing the boy had a hand on his arm. He yelled again as they collapsed through the surface of the water, the surface sealing behind him. _

_He collapsed hard on his captor and felt their lips brush together as the words echoed through his brain._

"_You were looking at me…_

…_weren't you?"_

_

* * *

_  
Naruto's eyes snapped open, and he stared into space for a moment, attempting to recover himself as he lay there, breathing hard. He sheets were hot. He hugged them to himself forcefully, trying to forget the cold of the water he had plunged into in his dream, and rubbed at his lips feverishly. The bad taste of over-night wisdom left a bitter tang on his tongue, and he contemplated getting up to brush his teeth, as to better rid himself of it. Glancing over at his blinking radio alarm clock, it was probably a good idea.

He forced himself away from the warmth of his bed, clambering out onto the freezing early day carpet and looking over at the sun as it came up over the horizon. He noticed that his window was still open; he had forgotten to close it. He sighed, walking over and pulling it down. He reached up and rubbed at his lips again for good measure, his stomach rolling unpleasantly.

He walked into the bathroom, turning on the water over a brush full of mint-flavored toothpaste which he then raised to his mouth. He scrubbed away for a good two minutes, covering his tongue extensively along with everything else he should, gurgling and spitting. He took two pills for good measure and downed then without water.

He went back into his room, dressed, and emerged again, going to the kitchen to pop an uncooked waffle in his mouth, and then returning to his room to pile the offensive papers and a box into his briefcase. He took his briefcase to the entryway, setting it down beside the coat rack and eating his waffle in relative silence. He had a drink of milk out of the carton, went back to the coat rack, through his coat around his shoulders, crouching down to get his shoes on, scooping up his briefcase and fetching his keys from the counter. He left, locking the door behind him, just as the microwave beeped loudly, announcing to the world that it was six o'clock in the morning.

Before leaving, however he wrote a single word on a piece of paper and taped it to his computer monitor a paper with a single word on it, that hopefully would remind him why he took sedatives that put him to sleep without dreams.

'_Ghosts._'

* * *

Naruto took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, peaceful for the first time since he'd gone to sleep last night. He kept his eyes on the cartoon Native American woman singing on the television monitor. The room echoed with her voice and he smiled to himself. Personally, he liked Disney's _Pocahontas_. Even if it was historically inaccurate to the max, it wasn't made to be anything else. It was made to be an entertaining love story that taught why hatred and racism wasn't the way to do things, and in his opinion it was a very nice film. He still preferred the original animated _101 Dalmatians_ but that didn't have much to do with anything. 

He looked away from the screen after a while, as he was apt to, scanning the room for the potential apathetic student who thought they could get away with goofing off on movie days. He caught Chouji eating his chips and shot him a look. The boy looked slightly put out but set them down begrudgingly and turned back to the movie. Kiba scowled in Naruto's direction, but the teacher raised his eyebrows in a 'you don't like it, just try and make me change it' kind of look, and the boy turned back with a frown.

A shiver ran up his spine and he let his eyes wander to the upper right hand corner of his peripheral vision. His temper flared, fire showing in his eyes but staying beneath his skin (for the time being) as he locked gazes with Sasuke from across the room. The Uchiha was sitting quite still in his chair, his body twisted so that his legs were facing the screen but his eyes could stay on their chosen course.

Naruto remembered drowning, and shivered again, but he refused to turn away. He nudged through the air at the movie, his gestures speaking for him so that he didn't have to.

_I don't remember my name being Pocahontas. Watch the movie._

Sasuke raised his eyebrows. Naruto gave him a pointed look.

_Watch the damn movie, I said. _

He could have sworn he saw the boy roll his eyes, but they remained in a staring contest.

_Watch the damn movie before I come over there and make you watch the damn movie, bastard._

Sasuke sighed, contemptuously, and turned back to it, but not before giving Naruto a look he could not interpret. The blonde watched him for a while longer, trying to read him. Dammit…what was that supposed to have meant?

He turned back to the movie as well, but soon found himself staring blankly at Sasuke's back. That dream was confusing him now. He scowled and forcibly pointed his eyes back at the screen. The only problem was that now he couldn't stop thinking about it. He damned himself and all of his rash, faulty decisions to hell. This couldn't be happening…dammit, this couldn't be happening to him! Stupid dream…_stupid_ dream!

Unfortunately, his preoccupied mind didn't seem enough to distract his eyes. He noticed that he was staring again. And, even more unfortunately, Sasuke was staring back, one of his eyebrows raised. Naruto swore to himself and turned back to the film. Sasuke's eyes did not leave him but he ignored it, and prayed for the bell to ring, not even daring to look at the clock for fear of giving his eyes any chance of freedom.

Alright, that dream was officially damned to hell. He didn't care if it took him with it, so long as it never interfered with his dislike of Uchiha Sasuke _ever_ again.

He played with his fingers, tried to focus on the images playing out in front of him, anything to keep himself away from the subject that was temporarily dangerous. All he had to do was outlast the period, which he'd done every day since the day he'd first started. Everything was going to be alright. All he had to do was keep calm, not panic, and avoid looking at Uchiha at all costs. He could do that.

…couldn't he?

His ears seemed abnormally tight against his head. Why couldn't he keep himself distracted? Dammit, he was supposed to be good at this. Didn't he always give people the impression he had ADHD if they ever met him anywhere near a staff meeting? Come on! He had to focus on not focusing. That was one of his strong points.

So why the hell couldn't he do it now!

His face burned. Sasuke still hadn't taken his eyes off of him, he could tell. The air around him seemed hotter, and a new kind of hatred surged through his veins. He hated the dream, sure, but it wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been Uchiha Sasuke who he'd accidentally kissed. It had been an accident, too; he was completely free of fault. It was all the Uchiha's doing. Dammit. Why did it have to be him? The prick. When had Naruto ever invited a person like _him_ into his dreams! Dammit!

He pushed the thought away and stared at the monitor with all he had, tapping his thumb on his elbow. He swore to all that pretended to be holy, if that fucking bell didn't ring in less than two fucking minutes he was going to…

_Beeee…!_

Speak of the devil.

He sighed and stood, almost relieved, and easily forced a wide smile onto his face. "Okay guys! Have a good weekend!" The clamor began over the sound of the movie and he sighed softly, going over to the door and opening it, kicking the stand down so that they could all move out into the halls and going back to his desk, sighing again and releasing his pent up discontent over the whole thing.

As the masses began to truly vanish with snippets of farewells, which he off-handedly returned, he noticed that the movie was still going and walked up the aisle to pop it out of the VCR. He fumbled about on the counter beside it for the box, and stuffed the video in upon finding it. He set it down and thought about going down to the teacher's lounge now for a cup of ramen. That sounded good…he did have a prep period during second and it wasn't as if he had much 'prepping' to do. And besides, he could really use some ramen. The noodles always helped clear his mind. Maybe he could catch Gai before he left and they could go visit Lee together, too…

"Sensei."

Naruto spun around, almost whacking his head on the VCR, alarmed at the voice that had so abruptly broken in upon his soothing thoughts. Sasuke stood where he was, stalk still and seemingly unimpressed and unaffected by Naruto's jumpiness. As in the first week of school, the blonde was reminded of a snake, looking at him, and he visibly gathered his composure, leaning back against the counters.

"Yes, Uchiha-san?"

The Uchiha seemed only slightly at ease. His eyes were hard, hiding something.

"What were you looking at?"

Naruto faltered, suddenly, haunted by his past experiences. He damned the dream, damned the world, and damned the Uchiha to hell. Why wouldn't they all leave him alone…! Why did this have to happen to him…!

Sasuke seemed to have known from the beginning that Naruto would not answer him and he watched him as the older man scrambled about with his words, trying to think of something to say that would not make him seem like a complete and utter moron. He certainly did seem like a snake now with his fathomless eyes and his cold exterior that changed for no reason except in anger.

"_You will not get a rise from a cobra._"

Where had he heard that expression before…?

The ebony-haired youth now seemed assured that his suspicions were true. He nodded curtly, out of what seemed to be habit and looked Naruto straight in the eyes.

"Were you looking at me?"

Naruto shivered at his dreams likeness, flinching when Sasuke shifted slightly, as if to get a better look at him. The voice of the raven came drifting back to him.

'_You were looking at me…weren't you?_'

He had no words as Sasuke nodded again, turned, and walked out of the classroom. It was a few moments before he slumped against the counter, limply, as if all strength had left him. His legs felt weak, as if he had just been confronted with something worse than death. Maybe, he thought bitterly, he had.

Jesus, what was happening to him…?

* * *

Beads of sweat streamed down Naruto's whiskered cheek. The constant heated moisture had long removed the foundation there; he would reapply it later. He'd discarded his shirt in the corner with his belt. His muscles bunched and rippled beneath the sinewy skin of his bare stomach, and along his arms. He breathed, his lungs tight with the warmth billowing off of him. His hatred of himself and everything else drove him to push ever harder, ever longer, to exert his energies and ignore the perspiration soaking into his blonde hair and seeping into his cerulean eyes, which were bright with anger. His hands shook in protest and he ignored them, relishing the pain and depleted power rather than giving in. 

He pushed the bar up again, hardly satisfied with the strain. He grunted, brows furrowing, and brought the weight down again. Up, down, up, down. An endless cycle of wasted pain before the disappointment of the outcome set in.

"My, aren't we looking frustrated."

The voice behind him affected nothing; he shoved the bar up again before letting it fall back again. The hand of a silver-haired man on his own made him want to scream, but he settled for dishing him a ferocious glare. The physical education instructor raised an eyebrow at him.

"_Very_ frustrated."

"Shut up, Kakashi." Naruto's wrist ached painfully as he tried to raise the bar again and the scarecrow prevented him from doing so. He grunted in fierce agitation. "Dammit! Let me up!"

"What's bothering you?"

"Let me _up_ I said!'

Naruto released a harsh grunt of intense discomfort, his wrists aching terribly in protest as the weight of the bar as Kakashi pressed down upon it.

"If you don't start with the explanations," the scarecrow growled, deadly quiet, "I think you'll regret it."

The increased pain and scathing tone of Kakashi's voice was enough to get through to the blonde, who swallowed audibly, immediately ridding himself of any other bitter words he might aim at the wrong person. He nodded in an almost nervous fashion and Kakashi let him up. He noticed his arms were trembling as he leaned them against his knees and scowled at his own weakness.

Kakashi watched him, hands in his pockets, eyes holding something soft and strange. Naruto coughed, holding a hand to his mouth and watching him. When the spell finally passed, Naruto answered the question the man was asking him without leaving much room for detail.

"I'm alright, Kakashi."

"That's what you say every time you're in here, and it's never true." The silver-headed man shifted slightly from one foot to another, demeanor calm and slightly concerned, although Naruto couldn't see how those two things went together at all. Somehow Kakashi intertwined them well, in an experienced manner. Naruto was suddenly aware of how much sitting down stunted his height. It wasn't as if he'd ever been gigantic, but from where he was he felt naked; torn open.

It wasn't something he liked feeling, just seeing as it was something he figured he'd felt enough in his lifetime. He moved his fingers uncomfortably, fingering his ring. Kakashi nodded, seeming to understand flawlessly, and tossed a towel to him. Naruto caught it without missing a beat, mopping at his face and neck. He decided to try and stall as long as he could. Kakashi was too smart to be discussing such menial matters with. Not to mention he was damn good with dream interpretation. And if Naruto wasn't careful that's what he'd get.

He didn't even want to have _had_ that dream, very less know what it had meant. He knew it meant something – he never had dreams that didn't mean _something_ – and he had no desire to learn of it. Why? Because he was stressed enough as it was. He didn't need some goddamn dream fucking with his head right now, on top of it all.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at him giving him a look, waiting. He withered, giving in almost completely.

"I had a weird dream last night."

Kakashi's eyes clouded. He was entirely unreadable now. Naruto tapped his fingers more incessantly on his kneecaps, fingering the ring on his wedding finger out of habit. He hated when he wasn't able to read people, when he wasn't able to guess even a smidgeon of what they might be thinking about. Iruka-sensei always told him it was because of his tendencies to get too used to things, and he figured the man was right as he always was.

The reply came at last, slow and long-pondered over, carefully worded and ripened by a few seconds. "You didn't take your medication then…?" It was a way of clarification and they both knew it. Naruto nodded vaguely, and quickly jumped to his own defense.

"I was grading on the bed at, like, a quarter to midnight, and I haven't been sleeping well. Gimme a break."

Kakashi sighed, lifting one hand to his temple and massaging at it lightly. "Did you take it this morning?" Naruto nodded and he did as well. "Good. And your dream…?"

Naruto answered quickly, again. "It wasn't a nightmare. Don't worry."

Kakashi nodded after a while, still looking at him with clouded eyes. "Good," he said with a sigh. Naruto could hear the relief on his breath, however slight it was and he thought about smiling even though he was too busy breathing to do so. It was nice to know people cared, worried about him, just because he wasn't used to it.

"The way you're reacting to things, though, it couldn't have been too good of a dream to begin with."

Naruto froze up, caught in the act of a half-truth. He attempted to shrug it off.

"None of my dreams are good."

"None of the ones that affect you outside of sleep are good." Kakashi folded his arms, looking down at Naruto with _two_ bright silver eyes, the jagged scar that passed through his left eye and drifted downward into his mask peering down at him as well. It was intimidating, to have Kakashi look at him like this. How had the bandages come undone, Naruto wondered…?

It kind of exposed the secret to Kakashi being such an excellent interrogator, though. Damn did it ever. Naruto shivered slightly and prepared himself for a bit of storytelling on his part. He figured he'd summarize it, but Kakashi would know if he made stuff up in order to make it appear more docile so he'd probably have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God or whoever.

Damn.

The time seemed to pass slowly as he spoke. Kakashi always waited until the end of stories to react to them, simply because he built up to it. It was just the kind of person he was, and it didn't make telling it any easier. But atleast he wasn't going to interrupt him, like Gai or Iruka might, which would've been so much harder to deal with. He didn't want to have to stutter over things. It might mess him up so he'd have to start over again.

The end came though, and Kakashi nodded, sitting down beside Naruto with a thoughtful look at him.

"So it _does_ have something to do with Uchiha."

"Of course it does," Naruto said with a sigh, rubbing at his forehead. "It always does."

Kakashi shrugged, nodding again. "True. Still, I wondered if maybe it was something between you that had him acting the way he was in PE this morning."

Naruto looked over at him. "Acting? Acting how?"

"Mm," Kakashi grunted. "He wasn't trying. I noticed it quick as you would've, I just didn't do anything about it."

Naruto watched him attentively now, skepticism in his voice. "He just wasn't trying? Is that all?"

"Well, he was taking great pains to avoid doing work, and even more to avoid the pack of rats he usually seeks refuge with after your class."

Naruto raised an eyebrow. Kakashi shrugged. "Just something to notice." He chuckled then, the look in his eyes indicating he had just recalled something very amusing. "They kept swarming him, the boys who usually look to him as their leader and he kept shrugging them off…and when I was watching him once he looked just about ready to hit one of them…I don't even think the moron _noticed_."

Naruto let loose another cough from deep in his lungs, glancing up at the clock and trying to avoid taking any interest in such stories. He knew Kakashi was still laughing, one eye kept on him lazily, and he ignored him. The clock ticked almost noiselessly but Naruto heard it all the time.

"We'll be late if we don't go."

"Did you eat any lunch?"

"No." Naruto toweled himself off more thoroughly before tossing it back in Kakashi's direction, fetching his shirt, tie, and belt from along the wall.

"We've still got a bit of time before we go to class. I'll buy you some ramen."

Naruto, suddenly and inexplicably, was his bouncy self again, if only for a second, and got his clothes on in record speed.

* * *

**End Chapter 05**

-curses self to the ends of the Earth- Dammit…dammit…dammit…dammit…dammit!

I can't believe I just ended it there either…but what's to come is satisfactory, I swear! And…and…I just can't write any more! I just can't! Dammit! There's no more brain left in this old hot dog stand! –kicks her own head around the floor- I'm so sorry! I'm awful and terrible and mean and rude and…**uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan**! –bawling-

Dammit…! –rolling around in circles-

I _did_ re-write this, like, a billion times. I'm just getting so restless now. Don't fear for the fate of the series…I've got so much support, there's no way I'd ever give it up. I'm just not happy with my muses right now, or the way I'm writing. I don't know if it's just a weird thing I'm going through or what, but I'm rabidly attacking any OOC-ness I find in this with all the decency of a wood chipper, and being that way I just can't get anywhere.

Oh well. We're actually going to have all the good stuff in the next chapter, babes. –smiles deviously-

But I'd really, _really_ like to thank all my wonderful reviewers, and my _gorgeous_ BETA! You guys keep me going, especially when I'm having writer's block like this. Thanks for being fantastic, mina-san. I'm going to try really hard to make this fic as good as I can, in your honor. (And, I'm going to post responses to those reviewers in my profile. –smiles- So check that out if you reviewed, because I love you, love you, love you!)

--_Lady Lamb_


	7. Stolen Smiles

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** _This chapter has not been BETA'd due to the fact that Katana-chan has been in a car accident._ I wasn't actually planning on releasing it so soon, but I'm so sick with worry about her right now that I don't know what else. She's assured me (via text messaging) that it's nothing big, but I'm in a state of nervous breakdown right now.

-huddles close to her friend- I'm hoping that posting it will be a good luck charm that will make her better real fast. I hope you guys like it.

**Note:** Boy love is good for the soul.

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2005. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_by The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 6**

**" Stolen smiles**

**spread no joy. "**

It wasn't the first time Naruto had woken and not known where he was. Certainly, he'd been in worse conditions before, but he couldn't recall ever feeling this miserable about it. It was unfamiliar and yet scarily real to him. He shivered, vaguely recalling things he had no desire to think about before pushing them out of his mind. His arms stung as the goosebumps traveled up the skin.

He sat still – he _was_ sitting, he realized, half-upright – and listened, trying to get a better idea of his surrounding without moving too much. His seat was warm and he felt a weird attachment to it, even though he could tell the air around him was very warm as well. He was in an apartment, on a very downy couch cushion. He shivered again, breathing in the small of ramen as the situation became ever the more familiar by way of circumstances and he looked up as his resident caretaker came in with a steaming bowl and chopsticks.

"How did you know I was up?" His voice was quiet as his eyes. Yohko set the bowl down before her own descent, folding her legs and sitting down upon them with a tired-looking exterior.

She smiled softly. "I always know."

He would've laughed if his heart didn't feel so weighted. "Just do?"

"Just do. Here." She took some noodles from the broth and offered them to him in an expert fashion, careful not to drip anything upon the blanket Naruto was wrapped in. He slurped them up gratefully, suddenly realizing his hunger. She was quick to dive back to the bowl and bring him more, and he dug in more heartily, moving in his seat.

"I can eat it on my own." He shrugged the blanket from his shoulders and put his hands out as the bowl was handed to him along with the chopsticks, and he began eating with the ferocity of a wild man. Yohko watched him for a while before leaving, only to return with more ramen. He could have kissed her, were he not so indulged with his food.

When he finally stopped for air, five bowls lay discarded on the floor. Yohko smiled at him, radiating patience.

"Want any more?"

He swallowed a last bite of noodles and shook his head. "No. I'm good." He finally smiled at her. "Thanks, though." She smiled back at him, appreciatively.

He cleared his throat, regaining a more business-like air. She noticed and watched him expectantly.

"How long was I asleep?"

Yohko shrugged, her hands together in her lap. "I'm not sure. Just under twenty-four hours."

Naruto swore, pressing his palm to his head in thought. "What's that make today?"

"Around 7 o'clock PM on Saturday."

Naruto swore again. "I didn't wake up at all between then and now?"

"Not really. Certainly there were times when your eyes were open but…" Yohko looked down and Naruto groaned, knowing exactly what she was implying and not liking it. "You put me back to bed," he said, chest hurting. She nodded.

"There wasn't much else to do. You were really out of it."

"That leads into my next question."

"Which is…?"

"How did I get here?"

Yohko watched him with golden eyes that were full of something that Naruto could not entirely decipher. There was a darkness there, beyond the mix of regret and concern and love, that he recognized as a presence that always came around when they discussed things like _that_. He paled, his stomach plummeting.

"Kakashi."

He shook his head, dissatisfied with only hearing that part of the story. He wanted the whole thing, even if it was only a summarization of events that would've been better off not happening. Yohko's lips tightened and she nodded, understanding and liking it no more than he did.

"He walked you here…he told me he didn't want to leave you alone. I…well, I agreed with him…you were really out of it, Naruto. It was…I mean, you were awake, but not really. Like…like your eyes were open but you were still gone. I…I don't know…you just looked so scared, Naruto, I didn't even know what to do. So we just took you in here and stayed with you until you fell asleep."

She was wringing her hands. That was a bad sign. Naruto watched her silently, listening to the story and knowing she knew what was behind it all. He couldn't remember anything. That was a bad sign too. The last thing he could recall…

His head ached tremendously and he immediately blotted everything out, scared of himself and what his mind might reveal to him. No. He remembered nothing, because that was a safety zone. He knew who he was, that was all that mattered. Anything else was better forgotten.

But something in him wouldn't stand for that, and the words escaped his mouth before he could stop them.

"How?"

Yohko looked at him. He grimaced and repeated himself.

"How? Why was I like that? Kakashi…how did Kakashi…how had I gotten like that?"

Yohko seemed to see that he was struggling with himself. He could see her contemplate whether she should tell him, whether to ask him if he really wanted to know, and then bite it back. He desperately wanted to know, and yet desperately wanted to recant. Questioning that desperation would give it too much freedom.

She hesitated once more before going forward.

"It was entirely by chance, he told me. You were in your classroom…on a desk I think."

Naruto stared at her.

"Was…I was alone…?"

"Yes, Naruto."

Naruto stared at her, but past her, into empty space, his tired self stumbling over something and looking back. No…something was amiss with this tale. There had been someone there. He had been certain of it. He could remember something…

His temples stung but he persisted past it this time.

"No…that's not true…"

Yohko's eyes flashed when she looked at him now. "…Naruto?"

"There was someone…someone was…"

Someone had…who…? Who had been there with him…? Who had—

He froze.

"Sasuke."

The pain in his head became unbearable. The hurt that came with remembering everything was so intense that he could just barely feel himself falling, again, as if this had happened before, and he could not feel Yohko's hands on him, or hearing her calling his name. No, he thought, there was only one name that mattered right now and it zoomed around his brain at a dizzying speed. Everything was dizzying, he noticed; everything about the world made him nauseous.

'_Uchiha Sasuke…_'

The blackness enveloped him.

* * *

_There was a wall pressing up against his back. He knew it was there, because that cold thickness was unmistakable. He knew it couldn't be a table or a floor, even though they were somewhat similar. No, inanimate surfaces were easier to interpret than most people thought, especially to people like him and Yohko who were so used to being thrown against them. It was definitely a wall._

_He didn't want to be here. He couldn't have possibly communicated to another human being how much he didn't want to be here. He was paralyzed by his own thoughts, though. Maybe his condition, too, if only a little. But he didn't often blame that for things. After all, even if he did, how would that make things any better? Kyuubi had done this to him…done this to both of them! Blaming his condition for his own faults made nothing easier on him. _

_There were hands on his legs. Maybe that was it. Maybe his own fears were what was making him stand so still. Those hands were so small in comparison to his own, articulate and warm in the palm. But the heat of them made him shiver uncontrollably. He damned himself, eternally, for being such a coward._

_Black eyes captivated him, staring into his. He knew that he looked frightened, and he couldn't help it. He **was** frightened. He was terribly frightened of what was happening right now. This was a nightmare that he could not will himself to wake up from. His brain was screaming but his voice was shaking to hard for him to do anything._

"_Do I scare you, sensei…?"_

_He knew the boy was resisting the urge to smirk. There was a part of him that hated this so much he thought he would revert right then and there, and have one of those 'episodes' that Tsunade would always warn him about. But that part of him wasn't enough of him, this time. His own survival urge had turned against him, keeping him still as anything._

"_Why…?"_

_It was only one word, and yet it summed up all that he wanted out of a question, all that he had to ask of the situation he was in. Why this? Why here, why now? Why me? What had he ever done to deserve this life? Why? Why, why, why…? Why me…?_

_He stared down at the Uchiha._

_Why you…?_

_Sasuke leaned up after a while, putting his mouth right near Naruto's ear and pressing them against the wall harder. The teacher whimpered, unable to do anything for himself, and hating it as the boy breathed against his neck._

"_You had the same dream I did last night."_

_Why? Why couldn't he do anything? Why couldn't he defend himself…?_

"_No…"_

"_You did have it. It's what kept your eyes on me, today."_

_Naruto twisted, his chest aching, his face bent and shadowed. "No…no…" There was no strength in him, none at all. He hated it, he hated it all so much. What kept him living? What could possibly make him so worthless as this…? No…_

_Sasuke watched him, reaching to touch his cheek at last and turning the man's face towards his._

"_You kissed me. Do you remember that…?"_

_Naruto squirmed, the scream in his head rippling through his bones more forcefully. There was something there, in the back of his brain, he knew it. He could remember it. He remembered strong arms – so many! – pushing him down, pushing him into a table not so long ago, pushing him down and holding him there. He could remember the brutality in the voices around him and the words he'd screamed as he'd writhed against the influence of the drugs._

"_**No! Don't touch me! No! Let me go! LET ME GO!"**_

_They hadn't though. In its own way, it had been just like this, to be ripped apart by that many people. Except now he was even more worthless for being tainted and unable to defend himself still. He hated himself for his own weakness, for refusing only in spirit a boy who was half his size at the very most and ten years younger._

_Lips that fell on the skin near his eye made him crack, and he plummeted into a place far, far away. Sasuke's words, not for the first or last time, rang through his mind as a parting gift before the darkness. And for the first time, Naruto heard the uncharacteristic gentleness in it._

"_It's a lie, sensei. We both know it is._

_So why do you keep pretending?"_

* * *

Voices were the first thing he noticed. There were only four of them, two that dominated the others, but he felt alien, as if he did not know who was speaking, even though he did. He pressed his eyelids together and groaned, pain echoing through him like some phantom thing that stayed on as a resident even though it hardly said a word to anyone else. He felt someone touch his hand, recognizing the familiar palms without flaw, and yet still feeling disconnected.

"Naruto…?"

He could hear how worried she was, how desperately worried she had been since he'd stumbled into her apartment what felt like a decade ago. He couldn't will himself to do anything, though. The affects of the memory that had played out in his dream still paralyzed him, and the strings of sleep hung tight around the skin of his face.

A different voice took charge of the situation, and from the muscles of her fingers, Naruto felt Yohko turn to look up at the man who tapped him on the forehead now.

"I know you're in there, dunce."

Naruto groaned again, squeezing his eyes shut before finally bidding them open. The light was bright and his vision was blurry, but he slowly blinked it off. His tongue felt thick and it stuck to the roof of his mouth, unlatching with a bitter taste of dryness. He felt like coughing, the taste was so undesirable, but tried to focus his attention on the task at hand.

Both Kakashi and Yohko were hovering over him, worry etched into both of their features. Yohko's thumb ran along his and her grip was tight on his hand. She looked near ready to cry, which he hated for the pain it invoked in both of them. Kakashi looked as if he hadn't slept in a while, the grooves of his cheeks seeming to be cut more jaggedly. He looked old, which was saying a lot. Most of the time the only indication that the scarecrow was any older than his student's was his height. (Sakura said it was because he was so slow to get anywhere – the years missed him by miles whenever they _did_ come.)

Naruto managed to smile beleagueredly at them both.

"Hi."

He could tell Yohko was going to have a breakdown if he talked to her directly, so he avoided looking at her and spoke in a general tone, keep his eyes on Kakashi. The scarecrow watched him in what seemed a wary fashion.

"How are you feeling?"

"Head hurts."

"Anything else?"

"Not much." If there was he wasn't aware of it. He would've said so, but his headache kept him well informed that speaking was not a pastime he should partake in much longer. His stamina was shot, which was odd because it didn't happen very often.

Kakashi kept quiet for a minute, seeming to think very thoroughly over what he was about to say. Naruto didn't let his gaze falter, and it set the scarecrow in his decisions.

"Do you remember anything, Naruto?"

Naruto shrugged. Kakashi gave him a stern look.

"How much?"

"Only a little."

"_Naruto_…"

The blonde heard the threat in his voice, and moved, almost uneasily. He hadn't heard that tone on Kakashi's breath in a while. It sent shivers through him. Jesus, too much remembering for one day.

Of course he remembered everything. Not as if it was useful to anyone or anything. Besides, the less they thought they remembered the less subtle their measures to protect him would be, which would be better than anything else he could imagine. Although, there was no way for him to know how much Kakashi actually knew, which was probably another reason to fudge it. It wasn't as if he was good at flat-out lying; he didn't much like the feel of it, which made him reluctant to actually try at it.

But he wasn't sure he really wanted Kakashi and the others to take control of this situation just yet. So he was going to limit their knowledge and hinder that interference for just a little while longer. Until he was certain he couldn't handle it on his own – and maybe even past that point – he was going to keep it as much to himself as he could.

Why? Because it's what he did, that's why.

"I dunno…I mean, I remember being in the classroom up until a point…and little snippets of you and Yohko…and waking up a few times…and the rest of its blank." He shrugged again.

Kakashi watched him a while before nodding, seeming satisfied. Naruto watched him, trying to make it as genuine as he could. "Why? Is there something I'm—?"

Kakashi stopped him before he could continue, putting a hand on his shoulder and pressing him back down into the couch cushions. Naruto shivered, remembering the dream, but forcibly kept all other signs of recollection on his face.

"No. Don't worry. That's about it." He smiled, visible eye curling upwards. Naruto smiled back at him, feeling fake, the action leaving him depleted as energy as the scarecrow turned to Yohko.

"I'll leave you two alone, hm? I need to speak with Iruka."

For the first time, Naruto turned to face Yohko, and saw her nod to Kakashi, her face kept blank. "The phone's in the kitchen." He nodded and opened the door, ushering Inari and Konohamaru away from it.

"C'mon boys, let's go get you something to eat if you're so hungry for the latest gossip…"

Naruto almost chuckled as the door shut, cutting the boys' whining to a fuzzy, incoherent sound that muttered through the walls. His chest weighed too much, though, and he did not. He looked at Yohko, where she sat, unmoving, staring down at his fingers. He took one of his own and stroked along her wrist in a way that he hoped was a little comforting, and she looked up at him. He could see how her eyes shone as she choked out the words she'd wanted to say.

"Why did you lie to him?"

Naruto shook his head, slowly, feeling his own tearducts begin working for the first time in months. "I don't know." He didn't, either. He had no idea why he'd lied. He'd just felt that he had to, that there was something about the knowledge worth protecting.

Yohko shook her head, closing her eyes tightly, as if willing herself not to cry with all the might she had.

"I knew it. You never sleep for longer than five hours unless something bad happens."

She opened them finally to look into him, clutching his hands.

"It's him, isn't it? Uchiha Sasuke. What did he do, Naruto? What did he do to you?"

"How did you—"

"You kept saying his name. You kept saying it over and over and over, and…and…" She was truly biting it back now, and it threatened to spill over. Naruto could see it, and it only made his own battle harder. He gripped her hands and she took the cue, springing upon him and gripping him the tightest embrace imaginable. The tears flowed on both sides as they clung to each other, unable to hold it in anymore.

It was so weird, for Naruto to cry. It felt so foreign, he hadn't done it in so long. But he'd only done it in Yohko's presence for as long as he could really remember so atleast the set up wasn't so odd. He was really crying, wasn't he? Oh, damn. Why? Hadn't he learned a long time ago that crying didn't solve anything?

It hurt so badly, though, that they were not able to fulfill their vows to keep one another safe from all and everything that ever threatened to harm them. It hurt with an unbearable intensity that only made them hug each other harder, afraid to let go, afraid to lose any more of each other to the world.

"I couldn't do anything…God, Yohko I couldn't do anything…"

Her reply was muffled as she sobbed against his shoulder. "It's not your fault…"

"All he had to do was back me into a wall and I lost it, Yohko…I couldn't do a thing…"

"It's not your fault, Naruto…it's not."

"Whose fault is it then?" The salty trails that wafted down his cheeks were cold from the air, freezing through him as it all came out into the open. "If I didn't want it…"

"You _didn't_ want it, Naruto."

"Then why didn't I do anything, Yohko?"

"Oh Naruto…" Yohko pressed her face to his chest, crying hard and seeming to just barely be holding back still, trying to retain her ability to speak, if only for his sake. He felt terrible, doing this to everyone. Why did he have to be such a burden? Why did he always weigh everyone else down?

"I should've done something…Jesus, he could've had his _way_ with me and I wouldn't have done a thing!" He was so angry at himself. Why couldn't he refuse like any mildly intelligent person? He knew that saying this to her would make her cry, which hurt almost as much as having had it happen in the first place. But it was true, which stung even more. It didn't matter if he didn't want it if he never did anything to stop it.

"I hate him." Yohko gripped him tightly, her arms curled around his neck. It was all in the way she talked, the things that were left unsaid between them.

_I hate him for doing this to you. I hate him forever and ever. _

He hugged her to him, trying to quiet himself and not succeeding very well. What was he crying about…? It was his own fault wasn't him? What kind of man faints and then spontaneously bursts into tears? He was more of a disappointment than he gave himself credit for. He wanted to go back to sleep, but that would require stopping his tears.

And no matter how much he told himself he was trying, he wasn't really. It wasn't as if crying made things better, but it was sure better than simply lying there and thinking about how sad and tired and frustrated you were.

"I don't want to go on Monday, Yohko." _He'll be there, if I go. I don't want him to be there. _

"You have to go, Naruto. It's your _job_." His cousin seemed even more broken up about this fact than he did, and it didn't surprise him. The empathetic spectator was often at the most risk of everyone in a bad situation; they were subjected to all things the participants were, and yet they were rendered useless, unable to do anything no matter how much they wanted to.

He held her to him, and cried, wishing that reality wasn't as deceptive as it appeared to be at this moment. He just wanted to leave, and take Yohko and everything he loved with him. He wanted his life to be perfect like it had seemed to be when he was six years old. He wanted for his bad memories to truly leave him for once. He wanted to be normal.

"I love you so much."

"I love you too, Yohko…"

…_So why can't I make our lives happy, if only for a little while?_

* * *

The world was quiet where he was, staring out the window at the leaves that refused to change color, as of yet. Autumn always seemed to come suddenly and unpredictably to the city; it was one of the reasons he lived where he did. He sipped at the steam of his cup of instant ramen, not minding the way it scalded his tongue and throat only slightly, in an almost affectionate manner.

His fingers were cold, even if the room wasn't. In fact, the thermostat beneath the eaves of the cupboards read 78° Farenheit to the outside's 50°. He sighed, steam twirling away from his breath as it drifted up from his noodles, and shifted his shoulders. His old scars had all been given him trouble since his chaotic weekend, and he hadn't slept well last night. There was something wrong with him, and it probably rested in the pit of his stomach where the ache usually lay.

Or, as a voice behind him made him better realize, there was a better chance it was sitting in the middle of his classroom, looking moody and acting in a way that was particularly aggravating.

"Sensei, if there's anything else you'd have me do, I'd request you'd inform me of it. Otherwise I'll assume we're done."

Naruto's set lips constricted visibly, the rage set in him by the insolence lurking in the back of Sasuke's voice flaring unpleasantly in his blue eyes. His hands tightened on the cup of ramen and he sipped it, forcing his anger to take the back burner to the best of his ability. Of course, that didn't do much for the smoke already clouding his judgment, but it prevented it from spreading, atleast momentarily.

"You'll assume no such thing, Uchiha-san." He turned his cold face, masked of emotion, upon his student with a vengeance. "Until I say we are done, we are far from it. Do you understand?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed and he went silent, reflecting Naruto's harsh coldness back at him. Naruto left the safety of where he stood near the window, setting his ramen down on the nearby counter, taking the boy's silence as the only reply he would be awarded without missing a beat.

He walked past the first row of tables and down the second, going to the Uchiha's desk and sitting on the one ahead of it, crossing one leg over the other and looking over the boy's 'completed' work. It was answered, sure, but that wasn't what they were here for. Finished was nothing in Naruto's eyes if there was no effort behind it.

Sasuke sat watching him for a long time, it seemed, before speaking.

"Do you faint often?"

Naruto twitched, flinching half out of anger that the Uchiha had voiced anything at all and half out of fear of something he did not understand. He looked up, tick forming on his brow. Sasuke stared back in what would've been an innocent fashion had it not been Sasuke that was the subject of such a description. He seemed to be genuinely interested, if one could've read that from his expression. But, then, that would be implying that Naruto could not – and he could.

Still, he played the dumb card without hesitation.

"No."

There was no 'why do you ask' added to the end of the sentence, because in all honesty Naruto had absolutely no intention of pretending he wanted to know. He knew already, but as long as they were playing games he was willing to participate. He was fed up with the boy, and his nerves were shot from having waited for this questionnaire for all of that day. He was – to put it nicely – in no mood.

Sasuke – who, doubtless, could tell this with ease – persisted.

"That wouldn't appear to be the case."

"Based on what?" Naruto was close to simply off and hitting him. Sure, it was illegal, but what were they going to do? Press charges? Pfft. He could handle charges. Shit, he could handle as many charges as they could dish out if it would just _get Uchiha out of his life_. And quick.

Sasuke continued to watch him nose resting on the bridge of his fingers where they were meshed in front of his face. Naruto ignored him, which was difficult, considering that they were centimeters away from one another. Naruto tended to be able to do anything he set his mind to, though, and he might've succeeded at what he was attempting if Sasuke hadn't decided to start smirking.

Naruto looked up at him, temper fearsome. "What?"

"You really don't like me very much, do you sensei?"

"Not too much, no." Naruto couldn't avoid being straight-forward with that one. He wasn't sure what it had to do something or why Sasuke had to have him say it aloud, but they both knew it was true. He could harbor as much dislike of the Uchiha as he wanted, but if the boy asked it wasn't as if he'd deny it.

Sasuke let one of his hands drop to the table, still holding his cheek in the other.

"I rephrase my question, then."

Naruto's reply was bitter where it echoed in his head, but he said nothing, choosing to meet Sasuke's gaze instead. Not for the first time since this had all started only about thirty minutes ago, he willed the time to speed through itself.

"Do I scare you, sensei?"

Naruto froze, staring.

"What did you say?"

Sasuke reiterated flawlessly. "Do I _scare_ you, sensei?"

"No." Naruto's reply was curt. His eyes were hard and Sasuke seemed to watch them with a sick sort of interest, as if he thought that if he could only read them, there would be no way that his teacher could elude him any longer. He kept his face straight through it all.

"That wouldn't appear the case, either."

"Based on _what_, Uchiha?" Naruto's whole being pulsed with anger. He had no desire to deal with this, not here, and certainly not now. _Why_ hadn't he hit this kid yet…?

"Based on the fact that it isn't the truth," Sasuke said matter-of-factly.

Naruto sneered at him, eyes flashing. "You're calling me a liar? That's a pretty bold accusation."

Sasuke shrugged, disaffected as ever. "One that I'm fully prepared to make."

"To what cost?"

"Yours, I assume."

"Yet _again_ you assume wrongly in my presence, Uchiha."

Sasuke's eyes had not left him. He felt put on the spot and nervous. He had no idea why he was nervous, and had no intention of revealing it at all. He kept his exterior solid, if not somewhat dangerous. This bastard was _really_ asking for it, and he hated whatever it was that was holding him back, and hated it with a passion.

"Sensei, if you dislike me so very much, I'm curious as to why you continue to _insist_ on my presence."

Naruto ground his teeth. It was a good point, not that he'd ever admit to it.

Sasuke continued, giving him neither time nor opportunity to interrupt. "I don't really care. You can keep me here as long as you want. I don't like going home and the longer I can put it off the better."

Naruto watched him, the depths of his rage unfathomable.

"Good. You'll be here as long as the state will let me keep you here."

"That's saying a lot, seeing how much you don't like me." Sasuke drummed his fingers against his jaw in an 'I-don't-care' sort of way, facial features relaxed and uncaring. Naruto wanted to tear him limb from limb and barely resisted doing so.

"Get used to surprises."

Sasuke's abandoned smirk flitted back among his features and he closed his eyes. "Fine."

"I mean it."

Sasuke looked at Naruto again with a question in his eyes.

_I don't know why you've turned this into a battle but…_

"I'm going to get you to try in this class. You just watch."

…_I can't let you win. _

"I'm not giving up, and I'm not backing down. I don't care what you are to your fellow students, because **I'm not one of them**. I'm just as friendly as the next person, but I'm your _teacher_. And I'm going to get you to try to succeed in this class."

Sasuke raised one eyebrow, leaning on his hand. "You act as if you're certain you can. I doubt that."

"I know. Which is exactly why I have to do it."

_I have to prove you wrong just like I prove everyone else wrong. _

"I refuse to fail you and let you win."

_No matter what._

Sasuke gazed at him for a while. "Win what?"

"It doesn't matter. Whatever it is, I can't let you."

They stared at one another. It was weird to have come to this one spot of motionlessness, this one moment of mutual silence after so much brooding and so many arguments, even if they were only waged with quiet passive-aggressive movements. It was almost perfect which made Naruto feel funny. There was barely anything in his life that was almost perfect, and yet this one piece of time would cover his necessities for a while, he thought.

Sasuke broke it, at long last.

"You're extremely unintelligent, preaching like that. How old _are_ you?"

Naruto kept quiet, calmed by something inhuman that seemed to have possessed him in that short silence they had just shared. "Over twenty, which is all you need know."

"Hn."

"Although, it's hardly a shock that my mental capacities don't impress you very much." Naruto looked up, staring into Sasuke's face. "No, I have no doubt you're several times smarter than me, at the very least. It doesn't matter, really. The situation is what it is."

"And what is that, sensei?"

"You tell me." Naruto shut his eye tiredly. "You're good at that."

Sasuke watched him for a long time, then, and they shared another silence. Naruto listened to the air buzz around them, feeling empty and yet full to the brim with exhaustion. He was so tired of this, now. He needed sleep so badly. He had been awake for so long. It was probably making him delirious. No wonder he was speaking so honestly. It wouldn't surprise him if this was all as fake as the façade he put on for everyone else, which almost made him laugh.

He hadn't really laughed since he was very young, though, which was a sobering factor. He sighed and let his head tilt backwards, staring up at the ceiling. His awareness of Sasuke was fading into the quietness surrounding them. It wasn't something he greatly minded, either.

"Get used to surprises, huh?"

It was more of a scoff than anything else, but for once the boy looked truly pensive, which was weird seeing as he was in Naruto's company. The blonde glanced at him, absently, hands folded behind his head. The Uchiha was watching him with something outlandish dancing behind his black eyes. Naruto refused to let on that he wondered about what it might've been.

"Yeah," he said finally, closing his eyes again.

He regretted it instantly as a hand shot out to grab him by the tie. It would've choked him as he was jerked downwards if he hadn't traveled with it. Unfortunately, though, that had its consequences just like everything else, and gravity prevented him from stopping himself when someone else darted in to do it instead.

Their lips slammed together clumsily before he could do anything to save himself.

_Surprise…_

* * *

**End Chapter 06**

Thankyou for reading. This chapter came to me and mindbreaking speed, so I'm not really sure what else I can do except have faith in it. I hope I can get the next one up before Christmas...and hopefully it won't be so depressing, ne?

Love to all of you. Thankyou so much for your support of me.

-- _Lady Lamb_


	8. Don't Bother

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** Wow. You guys have great reaction time, you know that? -smiles and laughs- OMIGODYAOINESSSSSS. Do we think along the same lines, or what? -gives readers a hearty smack on the back-

Socially, I'm doing pretty badly. But you guys needn't worry – that gives me all the more inspiration to write more for you! So, onward! Let's all do the SasuNaru dance of joy!

**Note:** Yaoi. Sit down. Shut up. Flamers should've read the goddamn summary.

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2005. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_By The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 7**

**" Don't bother,**

**I'll be fine. "**

His mother had called him to her once a day, he remembered, just to sit him in her lap and stroke him. She very much liked holding him, and he never once stopped liking being held. He would always know when she wanted his company because it was always just after she finished washing the dishes, when his father was in his study. She would sit in the rocking chair and look to him, wherever he would be, and call to him softly:

"Naruto, darling. Come here, won't you…?"

The words were always the same, and he would always scamper to her with the utmost urgency in his step, as if her simple request were the most important thing in the world. He would run to her and scramble into her lap, and she would take him to her with her long red hair and soft skin, her embrace like the ocean, total and gentle and enveloping.

She would pet his hair and ask him about his day, and he would tell her the story about what he had found in the garden, or what he had noticed about the newspaper that day as he learned to read of his own accord, going on and on in a sleepy sort of ballad, as if he were telling a bed time story to both of them. Throughout the entire endeavor, he would string his hands together, playing with his fingers and hers, and inhaling the warm scent of lemon suds on her skin.

Then, when he was finished, she would thank him with a smile.

"Thank you, Naruto."

And then he would say his line.

"Mama, tell me about my eyes."

She would smile and 'hm' at him, a soft hum at the back of her throat.

"Your eyes, Naruto?"

He would nod emphatically, and she would laugh, cupping his cheeks in her hands and running over them with her thumbs, stroking his hair back and kissing him on the forehead. She would 'hm' again at the back of her throat and hold him to her, peering into his eyes as a jeweler would look at a ruby of the more priceless variety.

"Oh, your eyes, your eyes. They're your father's you know. So blue." She would smile and give him time to speak.

"Yours are blue too, though, Mama."

"Oh, but not like yours. No…your eyes are a perfect blue. Like the cloudless sky or the glassy waters of a lake, your eyes. Azure diamonds, that's what they are. Beautiful. Beautiful and perfect. Just like you, Naruto."

"I'm not perfect, Mama."

"To me you are."

And he would laugh then, and they would rub their noses together in a happy Eskimo kiss.

"And my hair?"

"That, too, just like your father's. Well-spun silken gold to match the diamonds."

"Like the sky? Blue and gold?"

"Just like the sky, my little Sunflower."

Each night they would do this, and then he would scamper off to usher his father out of the study so that he might be put to bed by both parents. He never knew how much he loved those talks his mother and he would have every night until they disappeared from his life, and even then it took him a while to realize that it wasn't because of vanity, but because he liked hearing his mother's poetic ways of telling him how much she loved him.

It struck him that this was what had wooed his father with such amazing ferocity over the years, and how much they had truly loved one another, to have had a child like him so young, despite how much their personalities had clashed at the beginning, when they first met in college.

It also struck him what a sin it was for a woman like that to be put to death so suddenly by a car that had, after all, come out of nowhere with the worst of intentions, especially when the bullet through his father's chest had not even been meant for her at all.

* * *

Naruto's first instinct was to pull back. It was the logical thing to do, after all. Just pull back, just jerk away. 

The only bad thing was that his mind carried him too far, and he started debating about what he would do before it even happened, a mindset that forced him to opt for hesitation.

And the bad thing about hesitation was the way in which people tended to kiss him – which never much differed from the relative equivalent of his lips getting jumped at random intervals – in that it gave them more time to maneuver.

Which wasn't that great a thing in respect to people like Sasuke and Gaara. Something good to remember was that if someone was willing to spring kisses on you any time they pleased, chances were that they probably wouldn't mind doing the same with them_selves_.

Naruto _hated_ that. And that fact, time didn't change.

What time _had_ changed was his ability to utilize that hatred to his better advantages. He was frozen by the comprehension of what was going on, and it screamed out of every pore of his being, he knew it did. He knew it did and yet he found himself unable to do anything about it. It was as if something was holding him there.

Something always kept him stuck in these unfavorable situations.

Sasuke pushed forward, forcing his soul back into his mouth, and his body back against the chair. The boy still had a hold on his tie, he noticed, and again he pulsed into being, filled with unspeakable terror and revulsion. The recollection of Friday's escapades replayed in his brain, as did all the horrible Ghosts that had joined the band wagon without invitation, and something in him exploded.

He seemed to remember that he had hands in the same moment he remembered that there were other people in the school besides the two of them, and the smack of hand on skin - followed by the clanging of the metal legs of the chair against tile and the door as it swung in - rang out like a gunshot.

Naruto was shaking like crazy, and he knew it too. Sasuke seemed to blink awhile before realize he'd been smacked as hard as he had. He stared into space for a few seconds before raising a tentative hand to touch his face gingerly, as if testing the stinging pain there. Again he blinked, the spot flaring up defensively.

Naruto's own cheeks were bright red and full of the humiliation he felt. He'd half choked himself getting away, too, which didn't help stop his arms from trembling as badly as they were. He had pushed the whole row of desks back with the chair he was seated in his frantic escape, and he breathed heavily now, panicked and angry, his hand covering his mouth.

Sasuke was the first to glance over at Kakashi, who stared at them both, silent and facially emotionless.

"Do you need something, sensei?"

Kakashi kept his hands in his pockets. "Yes. You're dismissed as of now, Uchiha-san."

Sasuke looked indignant. "If you'll pardon me for saying so, sensei, I-"

Kakashi cut him off, voice gone cold and sharp.

"You're _dismissed_, Uchiha-san."

Sasuke's eyes flashed, hard and narrow, and he and Kakashi watched each other. The atmosphere around them boiled with the intensity of the glares they exchanged. Then the Uchiha stood, taking up his book bag in one deliberate, fluid motion, slinging it over his shoulder and moving around Kakashi to get through the door, which the man held open for him.

He glanced back at his blonde teacher only once before departing, and even though the older man was still convulsing and had his eyes locked on the desk in front of him, the smirk was so evident in Sasuke's voice that he knew he was better off not looking.

"Have a good day, then, Naruto-sensei."

His footsteps disappeared, then, down the hall, the click of the heels of the expensive leather shoes he wore echoing hollowly through the corridors before another pair of doors swung open and then shut again at the other side of the building, taking the boy with them.

It was this silence that allowed Kakashi to truly voice his opinions for once in a long while.

"Yeah. Fuck you too, Uchiha."

He didn't seem to have expected anything out of Naruto, and came over with the air of someone who's seen too much. He reached to put a hand on the blonde's shoulder, but withdrew, silver eye narrowing upon seeing the younger man flinch.

"Damn."

He came down to Naruto's level, looking him squarely in the face, shook his head and swore again.

"_Damn_."

Naruto wasn't moving. He couldn't bring himself too. He was frozen by the deceit of his own brain. Memories were flooding him. He needed his pills, and he needed them now. _Right_ now. His hands wouldn't stop twitching, and his eyes were glassy, staring straight ahead.

"Can you stand?"

Stand? _Stand_? Kakashi couldn't be serious. He couldn't even _speak_, very less _stand_! Oh God…thinking hurt. His head…oh God. The hand that wasn't on his mouth actually managed to do something, and he clutched his stomach as pain rippled through it. His eyes burned, as if someone were digging their nails into the backs of them, making them bleed. His cheeks were still swollen with embarrassment, and his chest hurt so badly he wondered idly if he were still breathing.

Kakashi brushed his fingers against Naruto's arm. The blonde flinched, again, visibly.

"Naruto," the scarecrow whispered, "you're either going to speak for yourself, or I'm calling Tsunade."

The Uzumaki's shot nerves jumped to attention. Kakashi knew it, too, and Naruto knew he knew it. But Naruto still said nothing, trying to get a better hold on himself; calm himself and all that shit psychiatrists had told him to do. Don't panic. Breathe – in, out, in, out.

That wasn't going to fly as far as Kakashi was concerned, and the PE teacher stood, looking intent on going for the phone in the corner.

"Don't…"

Kakashi glanced over at him.

"Don't. Don't call her." Naruto knew his voice was cracking, and that his knuckles were white because he was holding on to the plastic of the chair so tightly. He didn't care. There was no reason to contact the old lady. "I'm fine. Don't call her."

Kakashi came back to him, again placing a hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Can you stand?"

Naruto's legs were shaking so badly he wasn't sure they were still his, but he got up anyway, only to collapse against Kakashi, who was fully ready for it. He didn't let himself cry – he never cried in front of anyone but Yohko. But he shook, gasping for breath like a rock dove with a broken back. Kakashi cradled him in a way he'd only done once before, when Naruto was very small.

"Don't worry. We'll protect you. I won't let anything bad happen to you, Naruto."

"…You knew, didn't you?"

"I had my suspicions."

Naruto's arms were twitching convulsively. He buried himself against Kakashi's arm, eyes closed tightly.

"You're safe. Nothing bad is going to happen. I promise." Kakashi's voice was soft and steady, unwavering and resolute in a way that was almost desperate. Naruto doubted his words. They both did. But that didn't make him want to believe them any less.

"I want to see Iruka."

He felt Kakashi nod.

"Alright. He's downtown, visiting Lee."

Naruto nodded wordlessly. He wanted to see Iruka badly enough to stomach a car, he figured. After all, what could possibly happen to make things go any worse? Memories? There weren't many that _hadn't_ flashed through his brain recently. Claustrophobia could be dealt with accordingly. And if they got into an accident on the way there, well hell, all the faster they'd get to the hospital.

If that happened, Naruto figured it was a win-win situation, whether he died or not.

* * *

The Japanese community had long renamed the hospital off of Geary "_Kubome no Byōin_" after the sunken-eyed patients that went in and out. Few knew its real name, and few bothered to find out, because the ones who _did_ know called it Kubome anyway, even the oblivious tourists who pronounced it like a boar would sing Ave Maria. The place was built well enough, but served more as a rundown palace for bums who wanted a good place to light up without being run off. The plants leading up the short walkway from the parking lot served as a storage place for many a grocery cart piled high with cardboard and thick, worn-looking blankets. 

Not that any of the patients cared. Kubome was renowned the city-over for it's unusual surplus of terminal disease cases. That being true, most of the occupants – doctors included – were rather depressed people, more likely to get stoned _with _the troubled homeless that targeted the hospital as a sanctuary than to get after them.

Having befriended many of the long-term residents both inside and outside, Naruto knew that they sometimes did.

He was dazed as he and Kakashi ascended the cement walkway towards the all-to-familiar sliding glass doors, but still managed to nod a hello to one of those friends, before walking into the lobby. He noticed Kakashi give that friend as severe look before the door closed behind them, and almost laughed.

Kakashi turned back to him as they walked forward, shoes clicking against the smooth marble tile. He kept his stature tall for effect's-sake, and tightened his tie, which always hung loose and crooked. He looked forward with his free eye.

"I don't want you smoking right now." The voice was soft, but it was an order, not a suggestion.

Naruto ignored him. "You didn't tell me Lee was staying at the Kubome."

"I _don't_ want you smoking, Naruto."

Naruto shrugged. "I don't really care. I'm not smoking right now so you shouldn't worry about it."

"Naruto, you have a check next week. If they catch marijuana in your system, Jiraiya'll get you put in the Center quick as anything, and you know it."

Naruto shrugged again.

Kakashi nodded to the nurse at the front desk, who nodded back, signing in for both of them as they pushed open the door to the stairs and started climbing, neither of them missing a beat. Naruto wasn't up for dealing with elevators right now, and Kakashi knew it.

"Don't get a hit off of him."

"I will if I feel like it."

"Make sure you don't feel like it, then."

"We'll see."

"_Naruto_—"

"You didn't tell me Lee was staying at the Kubome."

* * *

It was pretty soon evident how _much_ Lee was staying at the Kubome. Upon pushing out of the door to the stairwell on the third story, Naruto knew they were in the right place. People swarmed through the hallways, crowded about one doorway, and he could hear a loud, triumphant voice as it carried through the hallways, mirrored by one that sounded identical to it, only louder. 

Kakashi gripped his arm protectively as they pushed through the sea of faces – his own was expressionless, but Naruto knew that crowds made the man nervous, no matter what the scarecrow would say in his own defense. Still, the blonde couldn't help the grin unfurling across his cheeks. He really had been worried, hadn't he?

The voices assured him that he hadn't been mistaken in where he placed such things.

He rapped on the doorframe as he entered, knowing he looked rather disheveled and not caring a bit. He felt more normal than he had in weeks cutting in on the little martial artist's grand tale (that wasn't so exaggerated) like this. At the knocking, said boy looked up, bowl-cut hair looking longer than usual as his wide, round eyes filled with glee, and he sported a new grin almost as wide as his teacher's.

"NARUTO-SENSEI!"

"Oi, Lee."

Iruka, who already had a rather contented look on his face where he sat beside Lee's bed, near Gai's legs, lit up upon their entry, beaming widely. "Naruto!"

He rose swiftly, and Kakashi came forward to peck him routinely beside the ear before moving to stand over Lee who began chatting with him animatedly. The dolphin almost overlooked it, but gripped his scarecrow's arm appreciatively to turn his attentions more heavily upon the Uzumaki in front of him, who he took up in a quick hug.

"How are you?"

Naruto gripped his friend around the waist for a second before releasing and stepping back. "I'm fine, I'm fine." _Alive anyway._ He turned to glance over at Lee. "What do the doctors say...? I haven't been here in a while."

Iruka waved it off. "He'll be fine. They don't even think they'll have to perform surgery...no tympanoplasty or anything crazy like that, at least for the ear. Otherwise, the wrist is healing up nicely enough. He'll be out in a few days, give or take." He nodded to the bedridden student who was gesturing wildly just to their right. "Although, knowing Lee, I'm sure it would've been fine to just sew him up and let him go."

Naruto shrugged, his hands in the silk-stitched pockets of his overcoat. "True. He's going to heal faster this way though. Lee being limited by a cast is a set-up for disaster; he'd probably just end up breaking something else."

Iruka chuckled then, watching him. "You know, Haruno-san said almost the exact same thing."

Naruto smiled. "Did she, now? I haven't seen a lot of her lately."

Iruka shrugged. "I've run out of beets, of late."

"Figures."

"You'd better be ready. I've arranged to have some more the day Lee gets back."

"Ooh, goody. Sakura-chan can celebrate while trying to put _me_ in the hospital then."

"I heard that!"

Naruto laughed, turning to give the pink-haired sophomore a good-natured look. "Oh, c'mon now, Sweet-Cheeks. You know I didn't mean it."

"Don't you call me that!" Sakura marched in, looking all-business, all except for the tell-tale smirk on her lips that gave her away as Tsunade's granddaughter. Her arms were folded over her chest, and one finger rapped methodically against her arm in a school teacher-like manner. "I'll have you put in jail for sexual assault!"

"Glad to see you too. I suppose I can go right next to your old Grandfather, eh?"

"Better believe it!" She elbowed him in the ribs with a grin, and unfolded her arms, waggling that finger in his face. "You two should be locked away permanently."

"He's been pinchin' the Old Lady's ass then, hasn't he?"

"And where do get off calling Baa-chan, old, sensei? Last time I counted, you're racking up the points too!"

Naruto laughed. "Oh yeah. Twenty-four. I'm gettin' up there, that's for sure."

"Darn tootin'!"

"Yeah. And your dear old Grandfather sure knew how to pick 'em too...why'd you and the Hag have to be so much alike, anyhow?"

"You're no pick of the litter yourself, buster!"

Naruto reached forward to ruffle her hair and she pretended to scowl at him. He chuckled.

"I'm glad Lee's okay, kiddo."

Sakura stopped trying so hard and let her fake anger diminish, face brightening into a smile.

"Thanks for the sentiment, gramps."

Iruka's eyes were on him and he knew it, letting Sakura go so that he could replace his hands at his waist, letting his grin fade into nothingness as she turned back to the gathered crowd and began scolding, loudly. ("Give him air at the very least, you vultures!") He turned to the man after a while, face serious.

"I'm gunna go downstairs, alright?"

Iruka nodded. "Would you like anyone to come with you?"

Naruto shook his head lightly. "Nah. I'll either come back or leave with Kakashi when he pulls outta here."

"Alright."

Naruto nodded and turned to go, but was pulled back by the voice in his ear.

"Naruto?"

"Mm?"

"Be careful."

He smiled back at the dolphin, who met his gaze very squarely.

"I will, Iruka."

* * *

It was weird, he thought, moving through the doors and out into the foliage beside the walkway, looking for his friend without really having to. He'd wanted to come just to see Iruka. Usually that included having an actual discussion or something like that. But this time just seeing him had been enough to calm down for the most part. 

Or maybe, he thought, spotting the tell tale shopping cart piled high with bedding topped by a shotgun and moving towards it's owner - who's back was to him - that desire had been replaced by a different one entirely, when he realized that the Kubome was their destination, of all places.

He walked forward and sat down beside his "colleague" without requesting or waiting for invitation. The smoke billowing around Momoichi's lips, and the indicative joint in the man's hand were enough to tell him he didn't need one.

"Oi, Zabuza."

The Momoichi laughed in an almost sour way. "What'll it be, Uzumaki?"

Naruto shrugged, half-flinching at his street name. Zabuza noticed, of course, but ignored it, having seen the blonde enough since the Ghost incident to be aware enough of it's mental effects on both the surviving Uzumakis and Sunaharas.

"Got any more a' that?" Naruto nodded to the man's joint, poised between his fingers.

Zabuza shook his head and lifted it to his mouth again, inhaling. "Fresh out, bitch. Anything else on your mind? Guns? Smack? Sex?"

Naruto raised an eyebrow.

"I was kidding on that last part," Zabuza said, looking over at him.

Naruto tried not to look relieved. "Good."

"You think I'd fuck you?"

"I worry every once and a while."

"Don't kid yourself. You ain't _half_ pretty enough." Zabuza blew the smoke through his teeth. The smell invoked something just beneath Naruto's left eye, along the top of his cheek bone, a want that stung at him weakly. He disregarded it, not for the first time that day.

"Good to know. Is'at it?"

"Got coke and cigs. Other than that, we're fresh out."

Naruto pondered over it a while.

"_No_ pot?"

"None, yuh slut. I already told you that."

"Damn." Naruto sighed, leaning back. "How much for the cigs, then?"

Zabuza shrugged. "I don't care. I've got too many, anyway - jacked 'em off some old dying bitch down near Candlestick. Just take some and slam me with any spare shit yuh got."

Naruto stood, rifled through the cart expertly for a few moments (more like a librarian's assistant shifting through files than anything else) before coming out with a pack. He looked to Zabuza.

"Got a lighter?"

"What do _you_ think?"

"You ain't gettin' _nothin'_ if you ain't gotta a lighter fer my ass."

"I _got_ one. Cool it."

"Good." Naruto shoved the blankets back in place, making the cart look harmless once again. He opened the pack, and fished out a stick, hanging it down in his hand so his friend could light it, and then put it to his mouth and taking a long, tear-inducing drag.

_Ahhh..._

After having a good romp with Ghosts and heroine addiction, Naruto could hardly see what his kids were talking about at all those "Just Say No" assemblies, about gagging on nicotine air when they'd first tried cigarettes. All that was a load of bullshit if you were to ask him. He was glad no one ever did, actually. It wasn't as if he was a drug advocate or a dealer or anything. He knew that they typically made your life worse instead of better.

But they didn't make _his_ life worse. They honestly didn't. Instead, when he breathed that crap in and then pushed it back out, it felt like he was exhaling sin. Cleansing himself. Purging himself of all the evils he had witnessed, all the pain that had been inflicted upon him that was not his fault. He felt like he was shedding a burden, instead of killing himself...or maybe they were the same thing?

He sat down again, aware of the exact moment Zabuza started laughing at him. He glanced over, feeling dazed but more himself than he'd felt in months.

"Wha'the fuck's your problem?"

"'S been awhile, has'nit?"

"How'd yuh know?" Naruto's reply was sarcastic. His neck felt sore, and he rubbed at it.

Zabuza whistled and swore. "Bad day, mm? Only a few minutes and yuh swung right back into yer old street accent."

"Damn bad. You dunno how bad." The blonde scowled deeply, the grooves in his faces more heavily set as the smoke hissed through his teeth. "Candlestick, huh? Is all they've got over there shit like Camel? Christ."

"Sure as hell." Zabuza blew out as well. "You're one o' my only customers who can tell the difference when it comes to cigs though, Uzu-no-pan-pan."

"Aw, shove it up your ass." Naruto took another drag, feeling sullenly bitter at the new topic that threatened to arise between the two of them. This is one of the reasons why he didn't like talking too long - it always came to this sooner or later. "I ain't becomin' a regular, so you can go do yourself in a back alley."

Zabuza laughed. "I might, on your suggestion." So snuffed his joint in the bark between his legs, and stomped on it with one of his trademark army boots for good measure, before turning back to Naruto, who was still puffing onward. "So, how bad a day we talkin'?"

"The 'got jumped' kinda bad."

"Oooh!" Zabuza's eyes lit up eagerly. "Details. Spit 'em. Now."

"Put the flag down, Commando," Naruto spat. "I'm dry."

Zabuza shrugged. "Fer too long, pretty obviously. You haven't gotten laid, since-"

"Don't you dare bring Gaara into this, jackass."

"Hey, you say sex, I look to logic." Zabuza shrugged again. "He's still after yuh, after all."

"You give a shit?"

"Not really. Go on. If it's not Gaara, then who?"

"No one you know."

"Oh, this should be good." The vendor grinned, teeth seeming oddly sharp.

"A student."

Zabuza's eyes bulged. Naruto looked impassive.

"_No._"

"Yup."

"Really now? I wasn't aware anyone in this world except Sunahara was insane enough to see anything in you like that." He looked Naruto over pensively, a hand on his chin, as if he were surveying merchandise of some sort. "Although, I'm sure hormones at that age can do alot for a person at that age, but you do about as much for me as a dead koala."

Naruto frowned, holding his cigarette. "That ain't saying much fer yer tastes."

"Hey, maybe I just don't go for streetwhores, you never know."

"Who's a streetwhore? Last time I recall, you offer yerself faster than you offer yer shit, _Binbin-daze_."

Zabuza shrugged. "Whatever. I'm better looking than you."

"Not that I remember."

"Your memory's fucked, then."

"Yeah, same to yuh."

"Look, are yuh gunna tell the story or _not_?"

"What story is there to tell? You keep interrupting with yer shitass comments."

"Man, you _really_ need a lay."

"Oh, shut the fuck up."

"I'm serious."

"I don't care."

"Look, just tell the story."

"I got kissed against my will by a fourteen-year-old. What's there to explain about _that_?"

"Is he pretty?"

"Like a camel's ass."

Zabuza watched him for a minute before speaking again.

"I think you're fuckin' with me."

"You can think whatever the hell you want."

"You _are_ fuckin' with me."

"So what if I am?" Naruto felt more defensive than he liked, and he knew he was acting it too. His temper flared, but not dangerously enough to save him from Zabuza's psycho-analysis.

"He _is_ pretty, wa'n 'e?"

"_Like_. _Hell_." He was not going to get him to admit this.

"Prettier than Sunahara?"

"Not. Pretty." He wasn't budging on this subject. Nope, nope, nope.

Zabuza was swelling with keen interest, his eyes glittering. "I knew it. He's prettier than Sunahara, isn't he?"

"No." Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. He was _not_ thinking about this.

Zabuza's face was laughing. "Don't you fuck with me. _Don't_ _you fuck with me_. You think he's pretty, don't you?"

"No." Nope, nope, nope. Nope. No way. No way in hell.

"You think he's _pretty_, don't you?"

"No." No _way_, no way, no way was he thinking about this.

"You think he's _really_ pretty, don't you?"

"_No_." He was _not_ thinking about this.

"You think he's _gorgeous_."

"_No!_"

Zabuza was really laughing at him now. "It's because he is, isn't it? Jesus! You little whore."

"Shut _up_!"

Naruto slammed his cigarette into the dirt, Zabuza still smirking at him knowingly. All at once he hated it, hated it for everything it was. Okay, so maybe he _was_ thinking about this, just a little. Okay, so maybe he wasn't just thinking about it a little; maybe he was thinking about it a lot. Maybe he was thinking about it so much he felt like he was being obsessive. It didn't matter, dammit!

"So what if he is pretty! So _what_! It doesn't fucking matter!"

Zabuza's tones were triumphant. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"Yeah, _right_."

Naruto gritted his teeth fearsomely, but knew he was beaten. That's exactly why he never came around Zabuza when he had real problems - the man wouldn't give him drugs, and would always tell him the straight truth that he sure as hell didn't want or need to hear.

Okay, well maybe he did need it. But that didn't fucking matter either.

"He's a prick."

"A gorgeous-ass prick."

"It's gunna take more than that to win me over."

"More than what?"

Both men looked up at the silver haired physical education instructor that had come up upon them so suddenly. Naruto blinked, wondering why he hadn't heard the man coming. That was odd...he usually had better reflexes than that. He must've been pretty engaged in the argument not to have noticed anything.

Zabuza, however, wasn't a drug vendor for nothing, and played quick on his feet as ever.

"More than my charm and amazing good looks to convince him to pay me. He owes me seven dollars."

Naruto kicked the Momoichi in the leg. Kakashi raised an eyebrow, skeptically.

"Getting that worked up over money, Naruto?"

"Hey, I've got two rent payments due this month. You leave me be." Naruto stuck his tongue out at his friend, who sighed, lazily.

"You should've come up to get me. I would've paid for you, you know." The scarecrow leafed through his wallet and flicked a twenty at Zabuza. "Keep the change, yuh pothead." He glanced over at Naruto. "Say goodbye. I'm going to go fetch the car, hm?" He turned and walked down the path.

Naruto kicked Zabuza in the leg again as the man fingered the bill in a miserly fashion.

"You make homeless people look bad, you know. You're everything those jackassed Republicans say about people on the street - you could do better if you actually _tried_."

Zabuza shrugged. "I gave up easy living a while ago."

"I know, I know. In the afore quoted pursuit of your ideals."

"You know, no matter what they say, you're Uzumaki under all that educated façade."

"Oh, well good," Naruto said with the scowl reappearing. "And you're still educated, whether or not _you_ let on any."

Zabuza laughed. "Don't go against your honor code, Mother Teresa."

"With a fourteen-year-old? Wouldn't do it if you paid me."

"Which is saying alot."

"Whatever."

Naruto stood, stretching his back, and popping his shoulders, noting the Cadillac where it sat near the curb, steam billowing out of the tailpipe and Kakashi at the wheel, eyes on him. He glanced back down at Zabuza.

"Hey, come by the store if you ever need anything real badly."

"The one off of Market, where Yohko works? I don' think that old bitch'd be too glad tuh see me."

Naruto narrowed his eyes. "You'll be happy I don' slug yuh fer that."

Zabuza laughed again. "Right."

"I'm serious though."

"I got it. Now run along. Kakashi'll be getting antsy."

Naruto waved over his shoulder and trotted down the way to get in on the passengers side, trying not to shudder at the car's interior, and by way of desperation, came up with something to very effectively distract himself with.

"How's Zabuza?"

"A few hundred richer, I'm sure."

Kakashi chuckled as they pulled away from the curb. Naruto kept his eyes on him, feeling petulant.

"How much did you pay him?"

"Pay who, what?"

"_Kakashi_..."

"I told you not to smoke."

"Who says I would have if given the opportunity?"

"Doesn't matter. Better safe then sorry."

"I'll make you sorry, sure as hell... How much did you pay him?"

"Enough to make a good amount of marijuana miraculously disappear."

"I hate you."

"Oh, I know."

"Good. Buy me ramen."

"Can do."

* * *

**End Chapter 07**

Whoot! Another chapter done! And only a few minutes after midnight. -faints-

Alright. This was another kind of fill chapter, but it sets us right up for the next one, and we've also been introduced to a whole lot more of the Naruto cannon character scene in this universe. Hope you were paying attention!

_A few terms for the unadulterated suburbanite:_

"Smack" - Another term for heroine.

"Uzu-no-pan-pan" - "Pan-pan" is a word for prostitute. "Uzu-no-pan-pan" pretty much mean's Uzumaki-the-Whore-chan.

"Binbin-daze" - "Mr. Boing Boing", or a man who is always on the verge of an erection.

-laughs- Profane much? Perhaps, perhaps. It all ties in, though, don't you know, so whatever, whatever. Understand that this chapter is mostly for Naruto, that he may make some very important revalations on the grounds of Sasuke - after all, the guy _did_ admit that Sasuke was pretty. That's a hard thing not to admit, though, honest as Naruto is.

Zabuza may have been a wee bit out of character, but I felt the need to mold him into the part I need him to play in this universe. Also, I really respect him - the guy is like the awesomest villain ever - so I kinda played him the way I thought he should be played. You might like that, you might not.

Also, I'd like to state for the record that the characters' opinions about things in no way reflect my own, especially when it comes to Naruto and drugs. Let me just let everyone know who was wondering: **no, I don't support drug or cigarette use in any way.** In fact, I lead those "Just Say No" assemblies with vigor of my own free will...so there.

I also don't know if my street tongue is very finely tuned. I have a few friends who talk similarly, and I tried to go off their examples to the best of my ability, which probably isn't that great, I know. -dies-

Thanks for sticking with me...happy holidays to everyone! Reviews have been replied to in my profile, and I'll try to get the new chapter up ASAP! (Wish me luck... -sweatdrop-)

--_Lady Lamb_


	9. Why Would You Betray Me?

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** Don't worry about how this one looks at the beginning. It's not filler, I guarantee. Love! (Omigod, shortest AN _ever_!)

**Note:**_This_ is the clean version of Chapter 8. It includes two boys (one below legal age) kissing. The more dirty version can be viewed as a fan fiction of the same title on MediaMiner(dot)org, a link to which will be provided on my website, and on my profile page. Readers are strongly cautioned that said version contains graphic sexual content that may not be suitable for readers under eighteen. Thankyou.

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2005. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_By The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 8**

**" Why would you**

**betray me...? "**

Yohko felt his forehead with dainty fingers, dabbing lightly at the light sheen of perspiration there. The thermometer beeped, high-pitched and sudden, from under his tongue, and he let out a groan as she took it from his mouth. He groggily watched her eyes scan the small screen that indicated his temperature, her eyebrows knit.

"What's the damage?" he croaked, finally, feeling as though his own skin might suffocate him with it's warmth.

She sighed softly, petting his hair, the ends of which were soaked with sweat. "You're running a 38.1° fever." Naruto groaned, closing his eyes tightly against the information. In his gut he'd known it, ever since he woke up in the middle of last night. He never woke up after taking his sedatives unless something was really wrong...not to mention the fact that he never got sick. Ever.

Yohko shifted her weight on the bed, putting the thermometer on the nightstand and then curling up to hug his shoulders. He shivered and leaned into the warmth, the wet comforter around him making him feel even sicker than he obviously was.

"You aren't going to be able to go to work, you know."

Naruto nodded and grimaced, finding it hard to pay attention to anything except the stifling heat and his throbbing head. Yohko tightened her arms ever so slightly in a protective gesture. "You want me to go call in for you? It's still early. Kakashi would probably be able to get someone to sub for you."

Naruto nodded again, and she gave him a light kiss on the cheek, getting up. "Alright. Stay as warm as you can...I'll be back in a minute." And then she was gone, disappearing from the room and down the hallway to phone the scarecrow from the kitchen. Naruto sighed, clutching at the damp blankets as he'd been told to do, and hoping she came back soon.

He hated being sick. Honestly, he could only remember being physically ill once in his life - a time that had been just like this. He'd been so overwhelmed by everything that his immune system of steel had begun to shut down in order for his body to focus on performing other, at the time more important, functions, like simply maintaining a certain level of sanity despite the tremendous stress put on him at the time.

Everything had began to die off, during that time, everything he'd ever known. Every point of stability in his life had begun to crumble, bringing him and so many of the ones he loved tumbling into a downwards spiral. It was sudden, and as a fourteen-year-old he was frightfully unprepared. No one had been able to help him. He'd stopped sleeping or eating regularly, instead letting both rest and food find him whenever it felt like it, mostly because he didn't have the time. His studies were disregarded for better things like chainsmoking to make himself feel better, which didn't work in the slightest. His frail and slowly expiring social life seemed to ruin everything.

It had simply been too much for his body to handle. True, it was worse then than it was now, but that didn't make the two instances any less connected. He guessed that the motive behind his current state of invalidity and the only similar experience he'd ever had were linked: the amount stress he weathered on a daily basis had always had a physiological affect on him. If he wasn't in a good place mentally, he wouldn't long be in a good place physically, either. It was just the way the world worked for him.

Damn the Uchiha to hell.

Naruto _did_ blame it entirely on the boy that he was like this. Sasuke's domineering presence and constant intimidation of him had made him into an emotional wreck, and he supposed that he was going to have to face the fact that he was one of the last people to admit it. Even Shizune had made mention of it when he'd visited her at the beginning of the month, something that was only about a week behind him, he realized.

_"Have you been sleeping well, Naruto-kun? You seem..."_

_"What?"_

_"...Well, **exhausted**, to put it bluntly..."_

He was just glad she hadn't prescribed him anything new. He doubted he'd have caught something this late into the game if he'd been given yet another pill to take – he'd probably have caught a more virulent strain of whatever he had now a lot earlier in the month. Then again, he thought with a sigh, he hadn't been to see her for his bi-monthly psychological check up yet. He had a very bad feeling that the way this was wearing on his mind would show up in the course of the half-an-hour sessions they had.

_Great_, he sighed. _I'm a fucked-over insomniac with a whole treasure trove of phobias and soon-to-be a new bottle of some anti-depressant, like Zoloft or something. Perfect._

Bitter thinking like that made him feel guilty, of course. He knew Yohko was worse off - she went to see Shizune on a _weekly_ basis after all, at the expense of the state, and he didn't even have to _glance_ through her medicine cabinet to know how crammed full it had to be. The schedule was posted to the inside, long and complicated: Zyprexa, to be taken daily; Lunesta, upon which she was dependant for sleep, to be taken every night; and then a long list of medications for everything else. He knew where the emergency card was, on the front of the refrigerator, where it was supposed to be for any mental patient at the Kubome.

He knew, too, where the long list was on the bottom of the silverware drawer, right beside the signed statement for both of them, confirming that they were no longer considered threats to themselves or society by the expert psychiatrists of the Center for Prevention of Drug Usage and Treatment of Psychological Maladies. It didn't take him having an eidetic memory in order for him to remember Tsunade's handwriting in perfect clarity, explaining to them which medications they needed to take and why, as long as the long record stapled to the back stating each of their phobias clear as day.

"Just in case" she had told him. He'd been pretty out of it at the time, but not out of it enough not to know what those words meant. "Just in case" coming from Tsunade was the equivalent to "when something bad happens, somebody might need to know".

He knew that that didn't bode well coming from Tsunade, probably to the point of her doubting they had even lost Kyuubi at all. But even now, he pushed it to the back of his mind. He was well aware that after all they'd been through, it was going to be impossible for him and Yohko to attempt being truly normal ever again. Perhaps they would be able to prevent life from being as violently hectic as it had been before, but that was really all that was in their power to control.

Normal was no longer an option.

He stopped himself, then, realizing just exactly what he was doing. Dammit. This was why he hated being sick. Illness dragged minutes into hours, filling the silence with an irrepressible buzz. It gave you empty spaces of time where there was nothing to do except think.

Thinking was that _last_ thing he'd ever want to do, now especially. He was too…_fragile_ to think too much. He shuddered at the word, disgusted, and tried to focus on things that were easier and less painful to focus on, like the rain thrashing against the windows.

"It's bad luck," he muttered to himself, not really making the effort to wonder in his head any more. "The first downpour of the season and I'm bedridden for the first time in almost a decade. Real bad omen, that."

"_Un, sou da na_." _Yes, that's true._

Yohko closed the door behind her quietly as she came back in from the hall, keeping her bright golden eyes on the same window Naruto did, the rain splaying odd shadow patterns across her face as it drummed against the glass pane. The woman came over to the bed to sit down upon it, careful not to block the mesmerizing view.

"What did Kakashi say?" Naruto whispered after a while, afraid to break the blank silence or interrupt the rainfall, for fear it would stop.

Yohko's voice matched his in volume. "That he would find the best or do it himself." She pet his arm. "I called Tsunade, too, actually."

"And…?"

"She said for me to address you as _'_brat' for the rest of the day in her place since she's out of date and to make you sweat it out until I can get my hands on some ThermaFlu."

"Only the Hag."

Yohko flicked him on the cheek gently, in a chastising manner. "Don't call her a hag, brat."

"Well, you should call her back and tell her how well you're doing. Yuh sound just like her." Naruto gave his cousin a look that earned him a pinch on the ear. He would've laughed if he weren't so tired, and he could see she knew it in the way she smiled at him.

"_You_ still have to go to work though, hm?"

She nodded. "It's not so bad. The best thing for you is sleep anyway, and the boys and I tend to be too loud for much of that, especially during the afternoon."

Naruto groaned. "How am I supposed to do that?"

Yohko continued to pet him in an assured way. "You're not dependant on any sort of medication for rest. It's easy. Just let yourself go."

He stared at her, full of skepticism. "I haven't had a nap since I was six."

"I suggest you start relearning your six-year-old habits, then." She stared back, soft smile in place. He sighed. He wasn't getting out of this, and he knew it. He also knew the six-year-old bit was a load of bullshit. He'd slept for no reason lots of times. He'd just never slept for no reason when nothing truly awful was going on.

Doing so brought back more haunting parts of his life that he'd rather not recall. Ever.

It took him a while to realize Yohko had started humming Ave Maria and stroking the skin along his hairline in a warm, caressing way. He blinked, realizing that it was one of the few calming songs of hers that he didn't associate with drying blood.

He blinked again, watching the rain and feeling himself sink into the pillow with Yohko's soothing voice.

"_Ave Maria…_"

The beads of water cascaded into one another. He remembered times when he had sat in his parent's car on drives when he was young, rainstorm falling all around them, and been hypnotized and fascinated by the windows. He'd used to make believe that the droplets were tribes of people, or herds of horses, all sliding towards one destination, occasionally overtaking one another or joining different tribes or herds. He didn't have to name them or anything, but they'd seemed like individuals…like people.

"_Gratia plena…_"

It was weird, the way rain played into his life. He loved rain…more than anything, he loved rain. For him, it symbolized goodness. Purity, in its own way. For bad things to happen during the first rainstorm of winter was very bad luck, in his eyes, simply because he had his own queer ways of being superstitious.

Consequentially, some of the worst experiences of his life had taken place during the first rainstorms of winters past.

Yohko noticed him tremble as she sang the words softly, and pressed her palm more firmly against his head. He took notice and calmed the acidic creepers and dark, deep pressure that threatened to envelop his stomach. Now wasn't the time for that.

"_Maria, gratia plena__…__Maria, gratia plena…_"

He wondered at Yohko's insistence that she did not suffer from the same ailments he did. They both knew that was a lie that she told to convince herself that she could care for them both as she always had. From the way the whole thing had begun and ended, Naruto had known she would never again be able to do that. He just wondered at her sometimes, how well she was able to almost convince him.

"_Ave, ave dominus…Dominus tecum…_"

He was relatively good at quashing his own desires. It was something he and Yohko had both inherited from their experiences, he had seen. But then, they had different artistic styles, even if – fundamentally – they were very much alike. He had a tendency to erase any wants he had before he even had a chance to fully realize them. Yohko just tended to smother them entirely and focus on the one thing that interested her, be it her job, or her kids, or (more commonly) him.

"_Benedicta tu en mulieribus…_"

Maybe it was the fact that they'd been protecting one another for so long that she decided to focus her _own_ self around his happiness and well being. It was one of the weirdest ways of living he'd ever seen or heard of, but he supposed that if it kept her breathing that was all that mattered. He didn't even try to imagine what would've happened if she'd died. It was too impossible.

"_Et benedictus_…"

He stared out at the rain, feeling empty but too full of thought to move. His face burned with his own heat and he shivered in the cold of the room. Yohko ran constant fingers around his ears and unruly golden bangs, her voice low in a soft and steady alto rather than her regular soprano, so that she might lull him into the sleep she wanted him to have.

"_Et bendictus fructus ventris…_"

He wondered why Beethoven had decided, of all things, to write the lyrics for Ave Maria in Latin. It didn't surprise him that Yohko knew it, could pronounce it, even though she probably knew only the melody as far as interpretation went. It didn't really matter, of course. It was beautiful anyway. He blinked again, for the first time in what seemed like a while, realizing she was achieving her goal. He was really honestly going to sleep.

"_Ventris tuae, Jesus…_"

He wondered, as a parting thought, if it was possible raindrops had a consciousness.

"_Ave Maria…_"

And then he was gone.

**

* * *

**

_He hadn't meant to scream. Honest, he hadn't, even if he felt like a small child making excuses like that to justify his actions to him**self**. He hadn't meant to scream. He really hadn't. But, come on, what else were you supposed to do when a boy almost ten years younger than you grabs you and forces you through the surface of a lake?_

_So he felt justified in continuing._

_The water was cold. Damn cold; like fluid ice. He writhed out of pure terror, desperate. He couldn't escape Sasuke's vice grip, and the frustration and plea for help rippled out from his throat in a piercing, elongated cry. The world spun with the water's mind-blowing lack of warmth as it enveloped him, sucking him down deep into the darkness of it._

_He knew Sasuke was watching him, even though the liquid that tangled around his form and made his clothes weighted blurred his vision almost irreparably. He squirmed and fought, bucked and twisted, screaming the whole while, in what he knew was in vain._

_And then, inexplicably, his vision was crystal clear. He realized now that he was entirely underwater, completely submerged in fear of himself and what might come of this. He contorted himself so that he might look back at the surface, letting out a frightful yell when he realized that it was sealing itself behind him._

_**No…!**_

_He meant to speak coherently…he truly did. But he could not. All of the emotion behind his thoughts would not allow him to form the words he needed to speak so desperately. He was too overwhelmed, under so much pressure that his tongue would not avoid him. Only his vocal chords were willing to listen. So all he could do was scream up to Yohko who was reaching for him in a way that seemed both frantic and futile._

"_Naruto!"_

_He put his hand back out for her and their fingertips brushed, sparking the electricity of the message that lay behind his eyes, in the back of his throat, the words he could not convince himself to say. It poured out of him though. It poured out of him in tears and toil._

_**Help me…!**_

_It was only a small brush of fingertips, however, and Sasuke was quick to jerk him further downward, leaving him to scream in vain as the hole he had collapsed through closed behind him. He drowned in the golden of Yohko's eyes as she called his name to him, pressing her hands to the glass-like water, even though it seemed so far away. He yelled ever harder in frustration and agony. _

_**Help me!**_

* * *

Naruto awoke to a feeling of déjà vu, his cousin looking down at him quizzically. The rain seemed not to have stop since he last rested his eyes, but some sort of internal knowledge told him that a great deal of time had passed, were Yohko's rumpled shirt and tired eyes not example enough of the day's departure in his absence.

"Are you alright?"

Naruto shook his head, absently. "No, I'm fine. You?"

"Oh, I'm okay." She patted his hand. He allowed it but felt eerily full of jitters, as if there were something he desperately needed to do and he could not remember what it was. It made him feel nervous and boxed-in, which weren't things he much enjoyed feeling.

"What time is it?"

"Around ten-thirty. You slept a while."

Naruto grunted with a nod, rubbing his eyes.

"Your fever broke half way through the day, I think. Would you like something to eat?"

He shook his head, feeling groggy and rolling over onto his stomach. "I'll just sleep until tomorrow."

She smiled and pecked him on the cheek. "Alright." She gripped his shoulders again in a tight embrace.

"Did you hear back from Kakashi…?"

"Yes…he subbed it for you. Said he wouldn't have felt right _not_ doing it."

Naruto laughed, feeling uneasy. He knew the real reason Kakashi had come; yesterday's happenings weren't going to go unnoticed by the physical education instructor, and they both knew it. Kakashi was going to be keeping his nose in this business now, by all accounts. He was hardly going to let the Uchiha walk away intact after causing such a scene.

He hadn't informed Yohko of those particular things just yet, which made him feel more guilty around her than he usually did. What was it with him and telling people when it came to Sasuke? It was so uncharacteristic of him to stay quiet about anything, even things he didn't want to talk about. People asked all the right questions, even, know that they were accustomed to getting the proper answers from him that went along with them. And, after everything the two of them had been through, it was second nature for him to just tell Yohko automatically, whether or not she needed or wanted to know, or asked any questions at all.

So why didn't he, when it came to Uchiha Sasuke? It shouldn't be hard. It really shouldn't.

So why, in all the seven hells, should he object so much to speaking about him?

Part of him didn't want to know the answer.

Yohko pat his head softly, bringing him out of his reverie. "Are you really alright, Naruto?"

He nodded, hurriedly, trying to dispel the concern billowing in her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine…just tired."

"Alright…" she said, still looking fretful as she kissed his ear. "_Oyasuminasai, anata_."

He sighed into the comforter as she brought it up around him. "_Oyasuminasai_…"

* * *

Sakura was stunned silent, he could tell. The whole class was. He was remarkably proud of himself, no matter how winded he was as the door shut behind him. The bell resounded through the school and the rest of the world as Naruto smiled to himself, reveling in the fact that he had finally achieved and accomplished something he almost _never_ did.

The pink-haired girl seemed too shocked for words, her jaw hanging open. "Na…Naruto…You…You're on…

"You're on _time_."

He looked up at her. "Damn straight!" He straightened, feeling very good about himself. "Aintcha proud?"

"In_describably_."

"Wanna celebrate? I got sake."

"In the _classroom_?"

"Don't tell."

"You could get fired for that."

"Maybe. Or maybe they'd gimme a raise."

Sakura looked thoughtful. "You're right…it could swing either way, seeing who you work with."

Naruto shrugged. Sakura laughed at him.

"Now why can't you do this the rest of the year?"

"What makes you think I won't?"

"Experience," the girl replied, airily.

"Mm…you're right. This could taint Iruka's perception of me, eh?"

"I think so. You should be careful."

"Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do," Naruto said, going over to his desk and fishing out a small slip of paper. "I'm going to sign this, and you're going to go back to class, tell him I was late, and forget the whole thing when I get you together with Ino this weekend."

"_What?_"

"C'mon, it's a bribe. Aren't you political?" Naruto handed it to her, although the girl looked indignant.

"You can't be serious."

"Just take it and shove it at me after school on Friday."

"Are you kidding? That's illegal!"

"Not if you don't get _caught_."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"C'_mon_! You can tell him you tore one of my limbs off."

"For the sake of your bad reputation?"

"Of course."

She sighed, shaking her head. "You're crazy."

"Yeah, I know."

"Which limb should I tell him I tore off?"

"My left arm. Ooh, and you beat me around the head with it, too. He'd like that."

"Fine. When this weekend?"

"I give no details, toots."

She glared at him. "Don't call me that."

He shrugged. "Relax and I might not feel the need to do it for you."

"My parents are gunna kill you."

"Only if they find out," he said with a grin. She chuckled lowly and shrugged.

"Alright. Your funeral."

He laughed. "If I have to die, I doubt it'll be by _your_ parents' wrath. Neji? Maybe. I could actually see that…encouraged the move a little too much for my own good, when it comes to the Hyuuga Branch House…"

"Yuh _think_?" Sakura interrupted, hand on her hips. He continued, ignoring the comment.

"But you? _Nah._ They'll probably disembowel me, but hell, I've handled worse."

"I should hope," she sighed, patting him on the arm.

"Right." He waved. "Out with you."

She laughed and left, obligingly. Naruto turned to look at his audience, whom he'd almost completely forgotten were there. He blinked, noticing the unnatural silence. No one spoke. He wasn't even sure that everyone was breathing.

"Uh…" He raised an eyebrow, peering into the crowd of faces. "…hi."

No one spoke.

_Crap._

"Um…yeah…if you guys are…corpses…could yuh tell me? Please? I have mild necrophobia, so touching dead people is kinda out of the question."

No answer.

It dawned on him.

"Ohhhhh…" He leaned back. "I get it. Kakashi's scary, eh?"

"_YES_," Akamaru groaned loudly from the front row, inspiring small giggles in a few of her wax-like classmates. "_CHRIST YES._" The room coughed in some stifled laughter, and Naruto chuckled himself.

"Well, if that's all…"

"If that's all?" Akamaru said, eyes wide and gesticulations exaggerated. "He's like a Denison of Satan!"

Naruto laughed. "He's really not like that all of the time."

"Is he a friend of yours, sensei?" Haku asked, soft, empty smile in place. Naruto noticed Akamaru color lightly out of the corner of his eyes. He subdued a grin, not wanting to call attention to it. _So that's what all the attention getting tactics are starting to revolve around. _He'd recognized them easily as similar to his own.

_Interesting._

He paid more focus to the task at hand, choosing to muse over it later, maybe bring it up with her after a while. The two of them were on relatively good terms, after all, and he had a desire to help her if the attention was warranted by the opposite party…

"Yup. I've known Kakashi for a long time…nearly as long as I've known Iruka."

Haku brightened slightly, seeming satisfied with the knowledge.

Naruto looked around the classroom, noticing the faces that still seemed unsure that they were allowed to be themselves again. "That bad, huh…? I'm glad I didn't have the, erm, _priviledge_ of speaking with him, then…"

"Where were you yesterday, sensei?" Akamaru piped again.

"Got sick with something." He shrugged.

"Was it bad…?"

"Well, whatever it was it's gone now…"

"Do you get sick often, sensei?" a boy called from back.

Naruto shook his head. "Nope. This'll be the first time in…" He glanced up at the ceiling, attempting to remember. "…about…oh…give or take eight years."

There was an intake of breath from many. "Eight _years_?"

"Why'd you get sick now then?" Kiba said, from where he had his feet propped up on his desk.

"Maybe because you've forgotten that the floor is where we put our feet," Naruto said with a skeptical look. "Just a guess." There was a wave of laughter and the boy scowled, taking them down with a begrudging air.

"Any other questions people'd like to ask me?" he said, looking around.

Akamaru shrugged. "When's the lesson start?"

"Right now, if everyone's finished," Naruto said with a smile. "We're going to be continuing our in-depth conversation about the Constitution…"

He taught the whole thing without really being engaged in it – there was no antagonistic look or comment nipping at his heels to start the day. He'd almost gone without noticing it.

Sasuke wasn't there.

He'd known it in the back of his mind, he figured, the minute he'd entered the room, simply because of the anger the boy invoked in him with his mere presence. But it really hit him now that he'd begun teaching without anyone to contradict him. There was no way he would admit that the something missing was favorable, but it definitely was missing.

He wondered, absently, what he thought about that, and if his feelings were appropriate. But all thoughts were quashed easily, and siphoned away into a place in his soul that he barricaded simply because of the unpleasant things he knew resided there. He'd be fine if he didn't think about it. _Just don't think about it. It's not that hard._

He wondered, too, if Sasuke had been there yesterday, either. Maybe that was the reason Kakashi had been so unable to curb his viciousness in a way that was less noticeable.

_Somebody help me, dammit._

* * *

No time to turn away, no time to resist, no time to _react_. No time to do anything except watch and let it happen, only being half-aware that anything was happening at all.

He didn't even know where he had come from. Their lips just collided. _Collided_. Sasuke had managed to slam them together, gripping Naruto's by his collar, pushing them up against the wall. How the hell did a fourteen-year-old manage the kind of strength and stealth required to surprise him like this, and knock him senseless? He wasn't small, especially for his age, but he certainly wasn't as large as Naruto, relatively speaking.

Why was Naruto thinking about this? Goddammit, if you're so much larger, get _away_ from him!

His brain was screaming, and he knew it. But nothing that was worth anything to the logic that ruled his life was registering right now. His hands had gone up immediately to clench the material of Sasuke's own shirt out of the instinctual urge to escape. The skin of the boy's knuckles brushed against his neck as the warmth of those lips overrode his senses.

It wasn't his fault. He felt like screaming but in order to scream he was going to have to get his drunken brain to overrule his out-of-control sex drive and his hyped up attraction to the something that was devour him with such arrogant indifference. Drunken? Was that the word? Yeah…it had to be. It was the only way to describe the half-drowsy irrational way he was reacting to this.

This was the second time…the second fucking time! Goddammit! He should be schooled enough to handle this!

But he wasn't. God. He really wasn't. His own hesitation, his own allowance was going to give Sasuke the wrong idea. Because they both pulled back slowly. Both of them at once let a small space of air pass between them, not letting go. Sasuke watched him for what seemed to be a long while but was probably less than a few seconds and Naruto tried to collect himself, to little avail. _What…am I doing…?_

The worst part wasn't even the beginning.

The worst part came when he didn't object to Sasuke diving in again, savagely. The worst part came when he let his eyes close.

It was a ravaging, plundering, soul stealing attack on his mentality. He wasn't really kissing him back but he certainly wasn't saying no, and Sasuke had obviously decided to take advantage of the fact, pressing them together again and again roughly, in a way that was oddly experienced. Naruto couldn't understand. Through the blackened haze of irrationality, he couldn't even tell what was going through his own mind.

He knew he was being used and abused because of his own foolish hesitance to stop it. And in truth he couldn't find the reasoning behind this hesitance at all. It frightened him. So much, in fact, that he almost realized what he was doing.

_What am I doing?_

Enough to awaken him out of a daze, anyway, when Sasuke finally pulled back to breathe, belatedly. He assessed the situation quickly, as one who was just come out of being possessed by something, only to realize that a bit of fast thinking is in order so that they might escape the matter at hand with their vital organs in tact.

He was slightly slumped over Uchiha Sasuke, his back pressed up against the whiteboard behind him, the day's notes undoubtedly rubbing off onto his white shirt which the boy still had a hold of, the first button undone. Said student was breathing almost laboriously and looking wet, as he had been outside for a long while. His face was cold, he realized, dripping with rain, and his hair was soaked. He knew, the way the boy was pressed up against him, the moisture had soaked into his clothing and would be evident unless he did something about it quickly.

What, in the mother of hell, was he doing?

However, even in the midst of coming to, he couldn't help but be captivated by the way a droplet of water that had run down the boys nose was now perched upon his pale lips. It made him desirable in a way that ripped Naruto apart for not having suspected it.

He had to get out of here.

He pushed against the boy's chest, still slow to regain himself. When he spoke, he was surprised at how unsteady his voice was, as if he were about to cry. It almost made him queasy, simply hearing it and how much it lacked any sort of conviction.

"Sasuke…get off."

The boy watched him with dark ebony eyes for a moment before completely disregarding him, moving to kiss the skin that lay just above his now barely-exposed collarbone. Naruto winced at the feel of a soft mouth and the teeth that hardly and accidentally feathered against his flesh. He pressed the boy more forcefully, still deficient in strength to back his words, but having enough of a mind to get what he wanted in order to remove the boy from his person.

"Off, I said!"

The boy stumbled back a few feet but kept standing, folding his arms as Naruto slumped against the whiteboard, pinching the skin between his eyebrows habitually at the headache beginning to gather there before standing fully upright, not looking at him. He redid his button, brushing himself off. Sasuke's eyes never left him…not once. He finally met them, feeling almost as grim and upset as he looked.

"You got me wet."

"So?"

"Don't do things like that."

"Why not?" The boy looked indignant, raising an eyebrow.

"Now or ever, Sasuke. Do you understand me?"

"Until you give me any sort of adequate reason," Sasuke said, arm folded and eyes emotionless, "the answer is no. And I'll do it whenever I choose."

Naruto's temper flared. "No you won't."

"Yes I will. And the more I do, the less you'll object, I think."

"_Says who_?" Naruto spat, venomously.

Sasuke grabbed him again, pulling him close before he could react.

"Oh," he whispered, soft and calm, Naruto staring at him, "just something you've proven to me time and again, _sensei_."

Naruto would never admit to himself the erotic thrill the boy gave him, using a voice like that. Never ever. It mostly had to do with his state of outright denial mixed with the rage he harbored for the Uchiha right then.

And that, of course, wasn't mentioning his self loathing at his own body's reaction to the kind of attention it was receiving.

Sasuke pulled away then and was gone like a dandelion seed in the wind, simply disappearing into the air, leaving Naruto to collapse into the roller chair that went with his desk. Blue eyes were dilated and unfocused, full of mixed emotions and amazing confusion and revulsion with himself. His thoughts were dead and empty, filled with his recognition of one thing.

Sasuke smelled like a mix of ashes and mint.

Naruto could no longer stand the thought of being around his own mind, knowing something like that.

* * *

Naruto came home early, not surprised (or too unhappy) that the boy hadn't shown up after school. He hadn't waited very long, of course, not wanting another run-in with him, but he'd had a feeling that if the boy's only pit stop on campus was to jump him, he wouldn't be coming back. Sasuke didn't strike him as that much of an over-achiever…or a stalker for that matter.

Why he didn't target Sasuke as a stalker was his own business and not an opinion he would ever share with anyone else on pain of death.

He opened the door dully, feeling drained and exhausted, the ceaseless rain outside drumming into his brain. He hated this feeling of captivity in his own life; as if he were a caged bird, trapped with no control at all. He understood full well that he had and always would have limited influence over how things went, but all the influence he did have was going down the toilet with his current lack of ability to use it.

By all accounts, if he hadn't been sure he hated both Sasuke _and_ himself before, he certainly was assured of it now. Truly, he felt like digging his own stomach open with a butter knife, just to see if it would quell anything. Everything hurt. He felt twenty years older, easily. How could just one incident affect you so much?

He didn't know. And that bothered him. It agitated him severely, this lock of knowledge, because it seemed to sing as a thematic for his entire life, at present. He didn't know how or why these things were happening to him, and he didn't know how he was supposed to stop them, or why he didn't even try when it came right down to it.

He knew he didn't want it. He _knew_ he didn't want it. But, why, then, didn't he even try very hard stop it? He hadn't been lying to Yohko when he'd said Sasuke could've had his way with him that one day in the classroom without facing objection. Naruto would've let him if his body hadn't swept him up and out of the situation.

And so, the only thing he could think to do was blame himself. It was a common method he used – not very useful to other people, but useful enough to him. It was his own fault, after all. He was dirty. Worthless. He really was a whore. And he knew it, too.

He knew Sasuke didn't understand what he was getting into. He knew that full-well. If the boy _did_ know what he was getting into, maybe he'd be more easily frightened away. Honestly, Naruto couldn't think of any other way to force him to leave. They could manipulate the school system, but how effective could that possibly be? Sasuke was determined in his course of action, and Naruto had a feeling that such petty things as a change of class schedule could be even possibly sought after as a reliable deterent.

Why was Sasuke after him anyway?

He dropped his briefcase near the doormat with a sigh, rubbing his forehead. He was getting a monster headache from all this.

He decided to muse over the rest of it in a shower.

* * *

Naruto's bathroom was one of the homeliest rooms in his house, namely because it was one of the rooms that made him the most nervous. He hated closed, small spaces where he could not see everything around himself; bad experiences left him with the constant paralyzing fear that someone was lurking behind him with killing intent in their eyes, or something worse. He hadn't been able to find a house where he could stay unnoticeable and low-key as he wanted that had a shower that allowed him a 360° view of the surrounding world.

Instead, he had gotten this bathroom, with a wide mirror that hung over the small sink and a window that opened up into the small stairway in the center of the building that led to the garbage cans. There was a miniscule shower adjacent to the mirror with a glass door and a small tile floor with a drain in the center. The knobs inside it were well-kept enough, but it really was a very cramped space with room only to stand – not even to sit half-comfortably. He tended to use it purely out of habit, even though he always had to keep the door open to be sure there was no one to stare back at him in the reflection of the mirror accept himself.

It was probably a factor in why he kept his showers going so long and at such warm temperatures, but simply something he did automatically after six years of having to cope with it. He could use the porcelain bathtub that lay beneath the window, but he associated baths with laboriousness as well as less pleasant things, and thus avoided using them most of the time.

He took off his clothes in the manner of a simpleton, unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it into the tub without much thought, before kicking off his pants. Before getting in he turned to stare at himself in the mirror.

Toned, tan skin that seemed to form itself met his eyes, as well as the numerous scars that trailed ominously downwards beneath the protective elastic band of his boxers. The black, tribal-looking tattoo of a sun swirled around his navel in an almost mesmerizing fashion and he let his fingers brush over it aimlessly, feeling the slight indentation where a knife had traced it countless times. He brought his eyes back up to the reflection, looking into them. Blue; deep, endless cerulean blue. He brought his fingers up to rub at the foundation on his cheeks, feeling it rub off in small, gooey flakes, brushing a few golden strands of hair away.

He felt the muscles in his cheeks tighten as he narrowed his eyes. He hated everything about the reflection that shone back at him. Everything held something that didn't belong to him, that Kyuubi had done to make it belong to someone else. All of the scars and tattoos didn't belong to him at all, and there was no way to remove them and the memories that went with them to the extent he wanted to. So he simply stared at himself icily.

_How does anyone stand you, Uzumaki? How does anyone stand knowing what you let them do to you?_

He shivered in the cold air and turned away from the mirror to turn on the water, discarding his boxers thoughtlessly, on the mat near the base of the toilet. The steaming torrent exploded from the nozzle and he felt the familiar urgency, even though he knew no one was in the house.

_Get in. You don't want anyone to see you like this._

As soon as the water hit his skin he shuddered. It enveloped him in a way that felt good, relieving him in a way few things did nowadays. He groaned softly, feeling his brow soften, the creases and pressure undoing themselves with the warmth. His hair wetted down immediately, sticking to his head and the sides of his face. He raised his finger tentatively, careful to rub below his eyes so that the foundation that was melting away didn't sting them.

It felt so good, to have the water rush into every inch of him, unrestrained and kind in the way it did what it always had done, always would do: running over his scars and everything else without hesitating. Sometimes it stung, but even then it was firm and gentle, coaxing the pain out of wherever it was hiding.

The air from the room was biting, much more so than it had seemed before, but Naruto ignored it, his cheeks flushed and finally smooth and free of cover up. He let the rivulets of water wash over him in his entirety, letting it soak into his ears and into his mouth, reveling in the familiar rhythm as it pounded against his scalp. As he pulled back from it slightly, to lean against the tiled wall behind him so that the water had better access to his chest, he realized that his headache had quelled slightly, and that the coolness of the air gave him an oddly clear head.

He decided that, if it killed him, he was going to need to think about this.

Why _had_ Sasuke done something like that? In his mind, he had overlooked the boy's reasoning as a minor technicality, but having such atrocities happen _again_ led him to believe that his "pursuer" (if you could by _any_ means call him that) had a different intent than he'd first suspected. There was a plan behind his eyes and he knew it, but he couldn't have read it for the world. The whole affair seemed to have come about entirely out of thin air, as if it was all on simple impulse.

Quite honestly, Naruto wouldn't have put it past him.

He considered for one second the boy being after him for real but dismissed it immediately. It was ridiculous. Inconceivable. If that was the case, Sasuke would be going to more effort than simply grabbing him at any random interval he chose. He didn't strike Naruto as the romantic type, but he'd certainly be going at it differently if a…a _relationship_ (Naruto blushed most profusely at the thought) was what he was after.

Besides, Sasuke was quite openly viewed as Konohagakure Academy's "Number One Bachelor" of sorts. He hadn't been able to find even one part of the student body where the Uchiha was not the topic of heated discussion, at the beginning of school, and even to this very day. If he'd really wanted anything like that, there were plenty of people his _own _age available for him to go after.

But then, fourteen-year-olds hardly applied such logic to things in real life. For them, simple reason was often downgraded to useless theory when it came to other people, which is one of the things that made them so desperately unpredictable, if not always agreeable. Maybe Sasuke really was…?

No. _No._ He wasn't even going to acknowledge that being a possibility. That would make everything even more out-of-control than it was already, and he didn't know if he could handle that. There was no way he was going to be able to handle a student actively seeking him out as a viable love interest. No. Absolutely not.

Well, so long as he was ruling that one out he'd better come up with something else. That's what you did if you didn't want to think about something – you replaced it with something, preferably a thought that would prove more distracting.

The subject itself was rather distracting, but he opted to overlook that.

He sighed, steam billowing off of his skin, and reached to take up to shampoo from the shower floor, popping the cap open and letting a generous quantity ooze into his palm. What the hell kind of thrill did Sasuke get out of harassing him? It wasn't even the fairly new physical abuse that was taking the worse toll, it was the long-term mental abrasion. He couldn't handle the stress, he'd more than proven that. The fainting last week hadn't occurred in over half a year which is mainly how it had caught him by such surprise; usually when things were gone that long, they were gone for good.

He didn't get it. Of all things, why would Sasuke target _him_? There were so many other students he could choose to take out whatever frustrations he had, so many other small animals to torture. So why him? Christ, it was like the Uchiha had just drawn his name out of a hat one day or something, and stuck to it ever since.

_Or maybe I'm just fun to torment._

He frowned bitterly, and scrubbed the shampoo into his hair. It wouldn't surprise him actually, seeing as this wasn't the first time somebody had singled him out unsystematically and then proceeded to make his life miserable. He dug his fingers into the lathered strands, working the soap in until he could feel the skin of his scalp and then rinsing them out, careful to keep his head tilted so that they didn't run into his face, and watching them as they flowed over his shoulders, chest and back, along his legs and into the rush of water that encircled the drain.

He sighed again, and wondered, absently, why he was doing that so often.

He couldn't call himself obsessive anymore, he thought. Sasuke was right in his face, after all (in more than just the metaphorical sense) and it wasn't like he wanted him there. He didn't even know how the boy had _gotten_ there, very less why it seemed he so fully intended to stay. _Maybe he really does hate me that much._ It wasn't out of the question.

He froze up, though, at a thought that suddenly came to him.

_Or maybe…_

That couldn't be right. Surely not.

_Maybe…_

That just _couldn't_ be right…could it?

_Maybe it's all a matter of him proving his dominance over me…_

More than anything he'd bothered to think about so far, this one made sense. What else had they been struggling with all year long? That had to be it. That just had to be. Sasuke had, out of blue and all of a sudden, discovered the one way to triumph in the battle of wits they had been locked into since the beginning.

_By backing me into a corner, he can get his way._

That meant it was all part of the game, then. Somehow, that made Naruto feel unbearably nauseous, and he clutched his stomach, the sudden dizziness in the back of his throat making him feel as if he might vomit. There was a violent bitterness in the way he hung forward, now. _It's all a game, then._ Well, if that were true he had nothing to worry about in the realm of obscurity. He just had to figure out how to overturn Sasuke's tactics and convince him that what he was doing wasn't going to work the way he thought it would. Disassemble his plan of action, in a way of speaking.

In a way, he was both relieved and sick with hatred at the same time. He had no way to communicating it to anyone, the way he felt, and he didn't feel like trying. He felt as if he were about to go into a depression, the horizons on either side seemed so endlessly bleak. And now this of all things. Well, at least it meant there was nothing behind his advances, which kept a large knot of trouble away from his life.

But…how was he supposed to overturn those advances? Desperation pawed through him. He had enough trouble thinking straight when the boy was _present_ very less when they were engaged in things like…_that_. He flushed wildly. Why the fuck did he just say engaged? That made it sound like they both participated, and he could quite proudly state that he had done no such thing.

This was bad for his health and he knew it. He just had to get _away_. That's all he had to do. He had to get ahold of himself and pull things back together, somehow dowsing Sasuke in some reality in the meantime. Assuming he could. He shivered lightly, thinking. What if whatever he was to do didn't work, though? Sasuke was persistent, if anything. What if he took Naruto attempts to turn him away as encouragement to try harder? What if he stopped being satisfied with just kissing and graduated to things like…

_Oh God._

Naruto couldn't believe he had just thought something like that. _No. No, no, no._ He'd acknowledged Sasuke was less that unattractive the other day with Zabuza…no way in hell was he going to let himself go any further than that. But it was like a drop of ink in milk, and the scandalizing conception of what else Sasuke might be able to do made his body react, a weird warmth racing up and down his arm.

He couldn't help it. Couldn't resist it. And he hated himself for it.

_God…God no. Why did I…? Oh Goddammit…_

He couldn't stand this. Why the hell did thinking about Sasuke like that make him feel so happy and yet so horrendously unclean? He dipped his head under the water.

_No…stop it…just stop it…you don't like him like that._

His body wasn't listening though. His chest throbbed and his stomach tingled strangely, in a way that elated him in an appalling way. Sasuke's kisses were intoxicating enough to make his giddy and this was enough to drive him insane. He couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand himself.

_He's your student, dammit. How dare you even think that way?_

He was scolding himself, he realized, and his body didn't care. He found himself leaning his forehead against the cool tile as he slipped into a weird funk. How could you be so physically elated and so mentally pained? It wasn't going to work, him being himself. The water was still hot, almost in a way that throbbed. The room smelled like steam, and yet it still wasn't enough to suffocate him or cleanse him of any of the horrid things he'd ever done.

_God… _

If anyone had any pity for him, any pity at all, let them speak now, hold a gun to his head and fire for all they were worth, or forever hold their peace.

The silence that echoed around him told him everything he needed to know from the world, and he slipped so that he was pressing one hand to the wall he was leaning his head against. He stared into the other one which dripped with water that interchanged every so often in his brain as blood. He knew it wasn't, but the guilt surged all the while, and a thrill that flew up his back as an afterthought made him hiccup his way into a sob.

The tears streamed down his face, intermingling with the water still jettisoning from the showerhead. His face was contorted in the deepest expression of sorrow and duplicity of self. He couldn't even trust his own _body_. The vulgarity he felt in reference to his own soul was alienating. There was no one for him to turn to now.

"Why…?" he said to himself, to his turn-coat flesh and skin, the tears still spilling down. "Why would you betray me?"

His thighs said nothing in return, of course, although the rest of him seemed to have gone numb out of what seemed to be an overdue sense of guilt, and he was left to sob to himself for a long while in the moist silence of his apartment, completely and utterly alone.

* * *

**End Chapter 08**

God, I feel so bad for him. –sighs-

What, you think I _want_ things like this to happen to the guy? Jeez! Just cuz I write it, doesn't mean I have any control over the plot or anything! –is a babbling maniac now, whether or not she knows it-

This one was a little longer than normal, but I managed to squeeze in everything I wanted to (just barely!) and I think it's a good follow up to the oh-so-filler chapter I provided for you guys just before Christmas…which has had its benefits. (And I have reaped them!) I'm definitely going strong with this baby thanks to all my reviewers, and I hope I've successfully satisfied everyone, atleast for a little bit…

This is depressing, ne…? Why is it I can only write sad things? –angry tears-

--_Lady Lamb_


	10. Channel 7

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** This one's going out to all the people who hate me for making Naruto seme. May you all have wonderful lives, and keep reading despite yourselves! And hugs to each and every person who reviewed - you are my heroes, and I love you so much for fueling me with the inspiration to keep going. And I'll try not to write in a way that's so confusing, ne, Chocobo-chan? Oh, and anyone who feels like it can check out my new homepage, which is the official NTW LJ community. Smiles all around.

**Note:** Anal sex. It's the ultimate tough love.

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2006. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_By The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 9**

"**Channel seven and**

**doomed relationships. "**

Naruto didn't pay attention to time very easily, as a general rule of thumb. It wasn't that he _couldn't_---he had one of the best internal clocks of anyone he knew, excluding Kakashi and Shikamaru who were weird that way anyway---it was just that he _didn't_. He never really took the time, or bothered to waste the energy on keeping track of time, simply because doing such never served an immediate purpose.

But he knew that he sat in the shower for hours.

By estimations that he and his friends would make later, he'd gotten home at around four-thirty, started his shower around four-forty-five and stayed there until around a quarter after six. He hardly knew that at the time, of course, but that probably didn't affect things much.

He had no idea when the water had gone cold, or when he'd shut it off. He had no idea what kept him there.

_I should get up. I have to move. _

But he didn't. He sat, curled in a tight ball with his legs up in front of his chest and his arms around them. He sat still as a stone carving, small and wet with tears and cold, soapy water. His eyes were red from crying, and every once and a while, he would start up again for no reason---except for how awful he felt in general.

His need to move, to get clothing on and dry out, was infinitely and effortlessly overpowered by the weight of his current state of misery. His mind was completely blank, even though it seemed busy, and he knew this because every time he came back from staring into space, the buzz would vanish and he would realize that he was not thinking anything at all.

So he simply sat there, unmoving and chilled. He couldn't will himself to do anything for any reason---a lethargy that he figured would probably lead to him dying---simply for lack of having anything better to do with himself. And that was the only thought that crossed his mind for a long, long time.

He was so sucked out of his body by stupor that he didn't find it hard to swing into that state in between consciousness; like a ghost, half-in and half-out of somewhere. He stared, blankly, at the dripping wet tile.

It wasn't hard to simply slip out of it all, at long last, either, and rot in the haze of sleep that overtook him eventually.

* * *

_They were surrounded by darkness. Not him – they. He no longer pinned himself as a singular noun, even if it would never be the same. He was never alone. He couldn't handle being alone; not now and not ever. He had grafted himself into becoming one of the Ghosts before, under the same logic, but that held no weight any longer. _

_But then, nothing held any weight any longer. He was only sixteen, almost seventeen, and yet his life had been strewn in irreparable tatters all over the surface of his skin. Nothing held any meaning, or substance. There was no reason for him to live; no reason for him to die. He felt…nothing. No sadness. No tiredness. No thirst. No hunger. No anger or happiness. No need to do anything that wasn't automatic._

_Letting _this_ happen was pretty automatic, even if it had been years since Gaara had been allowed to touch him with any sort of tenderness infused with his brutality._

_He was in too much of a daze to fight back, and as always it was his key disadvantage. The red head was ravishing his mouth without care, pressing them together, his grip on Naruto's arms tight. Under most circumstances – under soon-to-be circumstances – the blonde would've fought him, would've objected somehow._

_But he felt nothing. The affection for Gaara he had nurtured for so long was dead._

_Of course, he didn't fight anymore. As a broken soul, he had no business with having a definitive personality of his own. Any hopes, dreams, desires or passions he had ever had were vanquished, forever and always. He couldn't remember, exactly, what had happened in what seemed to be his past life, before he had been this way, but he didn't really care. It didn't matter, after all. He was empty. Numb. Bereft of everything._

_It was a sociopathic way of survival, but he would not really hate that for a little while, still._

_So he didn't move, didn't react, didn't feel, didn't participate in any of it._

_He simply let it happen. _

_Gaara continued to suck at his mouth for a while, in an almost violent fashion that invoked a soft sense of fear underneath every other piece of him that he hardly felt and did not respond to. Eventually, the Sunahara tired of that, bringing his tongue up to bite at Naruto's earlobe. The boy – or perhaps he was a man, although the notion struck him as unlikely – moaned, because it was what he had been taught to do._

_Finally, Gaara ended up shoving him down against the rectangular push Naruto had felt at the back of his calves, and the blonde toppled over upon it, with no sense of grace or dignity. The red-head was angry; he could tell. Even if emotions were not an article of trade he came by any longer, he was excellent at reading the emotions of others and the thoughts behind them, even if they weren't things that held much significance to him anymore._

_Gaara was angry at him, though, and he couldn't understand why. This was what he wanted, and Naruto knew it by the way it took less than seconds for him to be trapped beneath the other boy's legs. He stared back up at him – he was breathing hard. That was a shame. They hadn't really done anything yet._

_The backhand to his cheek didn't aid in his efforts to decipher Gaara's fury. He blinked slightly, feeling the pain as though he were thousands of miles away from it. It wasn't a foreign sensation at all, but it seemed far enough away that he could've pretended it was._

"_Goddammit!" the red-head snarled._

_Naruto stared up at him, unmoving, wondering what he had done in an uninterested fashion. He didn't speak, of course. Whores didn't speak if the dominant didn't exclusively tell them to. And his dominant had simply sworn for no apparent reason. That wasn't his business at all._

_This seemed to drive the Sunahara even further up the wall, and his bright green eyes flashed. "Stop that. Stop it. Stop looking at me. Talk, goddammit! Tell me no!"_

"_No," Naruto said, sounding akin to a robot. His voice felt as hollow as his being, raspy and sore from lack of use. This was the first time he'd spoken in perhaps two or three weeks. He didn't remember. It didn't really matter, of course. He'd long since stopped _really_ thinking for himself, so talking wasn't a very necessary function._

_Gaara smacked him again._

"_No," Naruto said, repeating himself as Gaara had told him to do._

"_Goddamit!" Smack. "Don't do that!"_

_Naruto was silent again._

_Smack._

"_Like that!"_

_Nothing._

_Smack._

"_Stop!"_

_Smack._

"_Listening!"_

_Smack._

"_To me!"_

_Smack._

_Smack._

_Smack._

_Nothing. Nothing except the darkness of a storage closet and labored breathing as Gaara half slumped, half sobbed over Naruto, who continued to lie motionless. The red-head was gripping his collar tightly, the dry-throated tears backed up by emotion but no hydration. Gaara, who had never had any desire to show his feelings, or given himself any reason to cry, had finally stumbled into an occasion to do so and was unable._

"_Why…? Where are you, Naruto…?"_

"_I'm here, Gaara-sama."_

"_Shut up! Don't call me that."_

_Silence._

"_Goddammit." Gaara stared down at him for a few second before drawing back completely. "He killed you. He killed you, utterly destroyed you, completely and totally broke you into a thousand pieces. He ruined you, Naruto. He ruined you!"_

_Still silence._

_"Stop listening to me!__"_

"_Yes, sir."_

_Gaara let out a yell of frustration, smacking him again._

_This time it stung enough for him to actually blink._

_That was all it took for the one breaking thought to pass through his mind._

_**God, I hate this one.**_

_Oh, yeah… This was a dream._

_He was dreaming about it again._

_Why hadn't he taken his meds…?_

"_Because you're the biggest loser I've ever met. That's why."_

_Naruto's eyes snapped open, meeting pitch black ones, and he became overwhelmed by emotion. _

_Sasuke smirked from where he sat casually on the blonde's stomach, black shirt hanging open to reveal pearly white skin. He reached forward to put two fingers to Naruto's cheek._

"_You really are a moron."_

_Strong hands encircled and clamped down upon Naruto's windpipe. A thousand memories of unbearable pain enveloped him. Couldn't breathe…couldn't breathe…couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe…so much pain, filling him, inside of him, violating him, ripping him open, biting into the wounds. So many times that the pain had been so overwhelming that he hadn't been able to say a thing._

_No air…no air!_

"_Dead-last," Sasuke chuckled, his eyes not his own, but clear and blue and paralyzing._

_The figure on his stomach morphed again, into one with long fingernails and platinum blonde hair that flowed everywhere; hair that should've been dyed plentifully with blood, with a pair of orbs that sought it more than anything else. Those terrifying eyes that sought to destroy everything._

_The eyes of a yakuza that was not a yakuza._

"_Fight me…_

_**Uzumaki.**"_

_Naruto screamed for all he was worth as he was enveloped in a suffocating wind of dark feathers._

* * *

Honestly, it was the first time in a long while he'd woken up screaming his head off. For one thing, he was usually in a hospital bed, and for another thing it wasn't usually _that_ dream that made him scream. Toss and turn, yes, but scream? No. He had plenty of other dreams to make him scream.

The one thing that _did_ remain consistent was that he woke up with someone staring at him.

"**AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!**"

"Naruto!"

One of the bad things about waking up screaming is that Naruto had trouble stopping. It was like getting on a rollercoaster: Where the sound would ache at the back of your throat and the top of your ribcage, but you could not release it because you knew that it would never cease, should you choose to do so. All those worst dreams would simply swim through his mind with an odd, nagging persistence, and if he was already screaming it was almost impossible for him to undo it.

Kakashi was weathered to the sound, but Naruto could swear that the fear for him that floated behind the scarecrow's one visible eye was just as thick and anxious as it had been the first time he'd ever done it; the first time he'd ever confided in anyone except Yohko afterwards, even though she had seen it all. He wasn't comfortable appearing weak to Kakashi, but in truth, he didn't have much choice in the matter.

He just screamed and screamed and screamed. And somehow, Kakashi had managed to get him an apartment where the neighbors were absent at all the right times---or at least paid him very little mind---so that when he stopped, no one was there that he did not want to be.

He huddled in on himself, wide-eyed and crying, as he hyperventilated. Truly, he was only working himself up again, and he knew it, but his arms were shaking so hard that he couldn't think straight. Kakashi reached to touch his arm, and he yelled defensively, still breathing hard, and the man leapt back in surprise.

He couldn't think at all, he really couldn't. He was so overwhelmed. Everything was pressing in. He bunched himself as small as he could into the corner of the shower, still sobbing openly. His mind was a mixture of terror and confusion – which are hardly pleasant things when kept an appropriate distance _apart_ from one another – and he felt as if his insides were avalanching.

Kakashi reached forward again, finally succeeding in laying his fingers upon Naruto's arm.

"Naruto…" he said, the urgency in his voice apparent. "Naruto, calm down. Calm down, it's just me."

"No…no…"

"Naruto…!" Kakashi took a firmer hold of his shoulder, shaking him slightly.

Naruto no longer hesitated to launch himself into what Kakashi was advertising.

After all, comfort wasn't exactly something to refuse.

He pressed close to him, burying his face deep in his shirt. He took great fistfuls of the dark cloth and held so tightly his knuckles turned white and he nearly lost circulation in his fingers. He cried big wet tears that made him look childish, and choked on them, which only made him seem even more childish. Hiccups wracked him and he made a vain attempt to smother himself in the fabric so that he would never have to be seen like this by human eyes. He felt as if he was nine years old again, but of course, he wasn't releasing everything like he had back then. Back then, he'd thought that death was the worst of everything. Back then, he'd been small and delicate and inexperienced in the ways of the world, which was hardly a description of him _now_. Now he had so much experience that it hurt, which made it impossible to release everything, and he wasn't going to attempt to delude himself into trying. Still, he was cold, and naked, and wet, and an unbearable mass of shaking, crying flesh.

And Kakashi simply sat through it all, taking Naruto into his arms and not saying another word, for what seemed to be both their sakes.

* * *

Naruto sat at the booth in his kitchen, bundled in a very, very large lemon-yellow towel that Kakashi had seemed to conjure out thin air. Kakashi seemed to do that a lot – conjure things out of thin air, that was. Yellow wasn't exactly his color, but it wasn't too hard on the eyes. And he was dry, at least. That was a nice, and relatively alien feeling---him having sat in a shower for so long. The cushion beneath him was a very satisfying change of pace, too.

He let his legs swing, out of habit, where they dangled underneath the table, while he stared nonchalantly at the cup of tea in front of him, playing with the string of the bag that floated inside, leaking brown. He glanced over at Kakashi, who was pouring hot water into a mug of his own.

Naruto sighed, muttering to his friend as he turned to stare at the wall, lifting the steaming cup to his lips. "I'm sorry, Kakashi."

"For what?"

The tea scalded Naruto's tongue a little as he gnawed on the rim, eyes swirling with some unknown, deeper matter. His thumbs drummed against the pale china for a moment. He set his jaw and swallowed a bit more tea, thinking on that.

It was a very good question, truth be told – Kakashi helped him so often, to apologize for his own incompetence once was hardly enough. They'd attended the same elementary school, not that they'd necessarily hit it off as the best of friends at that point. Kakashi was, after all, many years his senior, which made (in the earlier years) the whole process of getting close to him awkward.

Middle school had been different. Way different. He'd come to accept that his relationship with Iruka had been life-altering, as far as self-revelations went. He'd finally found a friend after so much time of being alone, and started to see Yohko in a similar light; instead of her playing as his surrogate mother---whose role it was to simply keep him out of trouble and help him stop crying about it later---she became a genuine companion on top of her being family.

She and Iruka became well-appreciated siblings instead of parents, playing their way into being permanent fixtures in his life. For once, he'd had a real sense of stability surrounding him – no more moving, no more hand-to-mouth, no more lonely days of laughing by himself. He'd _become_ as happy as he acted: A healthy, regular prankster of a child that got bad grades but was smart anyway, and all right with it even with the scoldings he was promised.

And so, their friends had become his friends. He'd come to accept that he just hadn't been born at the right time – that the majority of the people who truly understood him were older than he was. And that was all right, because they were the coolest people he'd ever had the privilege to interact with. Iruka had been the first to introduce him to Kakashi; it wasn't as if they were best friends, but Kakashi was someone they both looked up to, and he seemed to live up to their expectations quite well.

First impression were, by no means, though, the way one should've judged their relationship. Going by his _own_ memory (although Iruka now adamantly denied it had happened this way) the first time he'd met Kakashi was by the older one introducing him to the pavement and telling him to take his clothes off, and them kicking him hard in the ribs when he didn't fight back.

"_Saying stupid things doesn't get you attention,"_ the scarecrow had said to him in a sinister tone, both eyes (they were both still good back then) pinning him in one spot,"_it just makes you look stupid. Moron. Use your brain._"

Yohko had shown up by then, of course, along with everyone else that usually toted themselves along in her wake, and nearly ripped the man's head from his shoulders…but that was a different story.

And somehow, from that moment onward, their relationship developed quite smoothly. Quite sporadically, Kakashi was just…there all the time, as if it was simply his place to be, and had been all along. It took a fight to convince Naruto that he could trust the silver-haired boy, who was older than him by about three years, with everything he could've ever dreamed up.

It was a very weirdly established relationship, but the fact that Kakashi just kept showing up pretty much assured everyone around them that it was less than temporary.

That being true, a lot of the bad things that had happened to Naruto over the years had affected Kakashi almost directly.

And so, Naruto figured that there were a lot of reasons to apologize for.

"Everything," he said finally. "Anything I've ever needed to say sorry for."

It was Kakashi's turn to look thoughtful as he stared out of the small window over the sink. When he did speak, it was in a soft, serious manner---the words carefully picked so that they would sound as sincere as they were meant to sound.

"You haven't needed to say sorry to me for a very, very long time."

Naruto sipped at his tea carefully, eyes solemn.

_Yeah, and every time you deny that it's necessary you only make me all the sorrier._

Kakashi looked over at him, and their eyes met for a brief moment. Naruto let the man analyze his blank exterior, picking it apart and piecing it back together, trying to understand it better through dissection. There wasn't a lot to be understood, though, with the walls he so heavily surrounded himself with, and he was relatively certain Kakashi knew it.

Sure enough, the scarecrow let it slide, turning back to stare out of the window.

"What were you dreaming about?"

"In the shower?"

"Mm." Kakashi nodded.

"I don't remember a lot." He wasn't skirting anything, really. There were vague concepts that interacted with it, things he could remember feeling, but the tail end of the dream specifically he couldn't remember in the smallest bit of clarity. It had had something to do with Sasuke, but he couldn't even recall what exactly, except that it had been very…

…uncomfortable.

Kakashi eyed him with slight suspicion.

"What _do_ you remember?"

Naruto glanced over. "Was I talking?"

Kakashi was quiet for a while before he replied.

"…You kept saying Gaara's name."

Naruto watched him, gone silent. Kakashi turned to him.

"That again…?"

"You say that as if it was the only one."

To that both of them had very little to talk about, and it was good, because Naruto didn't particularly like the topic of discussion.

Kakashi coughed dismissively.

"Was there anything else?"

_Sasuke._

Naruto bit at the edge of his mug. "No," he said. "Nothing else."

Kakashi nodded, softly. "Are you all right?"

"…Yeah. I'm fine."

Kakashi nodded again. They both knew the statement wasn't half true, but it was ritualistic of them to act as if it was.

"Do you want to see him?"

"No." Naruto shook his head, firmly.

"He's worried about you."

"Exactly. And thus, I have no desire to see him."

"None?"

"None at all."

At least that wasn't a lie. Gaara would make things worse, and Naruto knew it full well.

Kakashi nodded.

"All right."

There was a long, quiet peace that settled awkwardly around them, then, and it lingered until Kakashi spoke again.

"You won't let anyone help you on this, will you?"

"What's that?"

"Uchiha."

"Mm." Naruto sipped his tea, glad for something to preoccupy himself with so that he might not face the conversation entirely. Kakashi raised an eyebrow at him, noting the practice as easily as a fish swims, but not announcing his distaste for it.

"You should, you know."

"It doesn't matter."

"You're a wreck."

"It _doesn't matter_."

"Yes, it does."

"I'm fine."

"No, you aren't. You know it and so does everyone else."

"I'm _fine_."

"That's a lie."

"No, it's-"

"Yes, it is."

Naruto growled his anger into his cup, sipping at it more heatedly. Kakashi didn't give the man time to ignore him.

"We could easily get him transferred out of that class."

"No, we couldn't. I'm the only ninth grade history teacher on campus."

"His grades are good enough; we could move him up."

"Put him in sophomore level?"

"He _is_ fifteen, after all."

Naruto blinked.

"…What?"

"I've been researching."

"I _got_ that much. How the hell could he be fifteen?"

"His parents put him through kindergarten late."

"When's his birthday?"

"What does it matter?"

"You're lying, aren't you?"

"I'm not."

"You are so. Why would anyone put Sasuke through kindergarten late?"

Kakashi shrugged. "I don't try to delve into motive."

"Yes, you do."

"I _didn't_, in this particular case."

"Why not?"

"There wasn't any need. The point is: He's older than we thought he was. It would be easy to put him in honors classes."

Naruto drummed his fingers against the china of the mug.

"I don't like that idea," he said, finally.

Kakashi nodded, shrugging. "I didn't think you would. You have an option now, though."

"I don't want him put in honors classes."

"He's smart enough."

"I wasn't debating that."

"You can't keep him down simply for the sake of attempted triumph over him in civil matters."

Naruto sucked at the glass.

"Yeah. I know."

* * *

**dogEred signed on at 4:05:00 PM.**

**BANGUZUMAKI signed on at 11:13:13 PM.**

**dogEred:** Sensei!  
**dogEred:** !  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** hey aka-chan  
**dogEred:** :D  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** ;  
**dogEred:** How are you?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** ima lright  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** and u  
**dogEred:** I'm doing good!  
**BANGUZUMAKI: **good  
**dogEred:**  
**dogEred: **…But your typing sux, sensei. xD  
**BANGUZUMAKI: **o I kno  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** XD  
**dogEred:** XDDD  
**BANGUZUMAKI: **now u kno why im not a englir teacher  
**dogEred:** XDDDD You spelled English wrong. XDDDDD  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** o shoot XDDD  
**dogEred:** Lol!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** heh  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** hey, akamaru  
**dogEred: **?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** can u stay a bit after class tomoro  
**dogEred:** Sure…!  
**dogEred:** Did i do something wrong?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** no no  
**dogEred:** OK, good.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** i just wanted to talk to u  
**dogEred:** Well, sure!  
**dogEred:** Oh, wait--  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** what is it  
**dogEred:** Mom wanted me to come home early tomorrow…  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** ah  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** u'll have to go then  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** cant let ur mothe down  
**BANGUZUMAKI:**  
**dogEred:** !  
**dogEred:** You could come with me!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** oo  
**dogEred:** Yea!  
**dogEred:** Ttly!  
**dogEred:** It's just work, after all.  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** oO R u sure…?  
**dogEred:** Positive!  
**dogEred:** OK, I g2g, sensei, but you can come home with me tomorrow, K?  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** Ok…  
**dogEred: **  
**dogEred:** Bye sensei!  
**BANGUZUMAKI:** sleep well aka-chan  
**dogEred:**

**dogEred signed off at 12:37:58 AM.**

* * *

Naruto could've gotten a degree in denial. A PhD, even. It was something he was very, very good at, whether that was a good or bad thing. It wasn't as if he was ignorant – quite the opposite, really, but that's what made him so good at denying things. He was so perceptive that it made it easy for him to ignore things that he didn't want to think about: feelings, past happenings, current happenings, his relationships with certain, unmentionably annoying people.

Denial was simply one of Naruto's many talents. His _forte,_ even.

Akamaru liked Haku. Naruto didn't know why that made him as nervous as it did. He had no idea how that led to him needing to talk to either of them, but – as if by magic – he seemed to find himself half-stumbling into both of them the day after he had first brought it up at all.

Nothing struck him as very out of place anymore. Of course, his life itself was rather out of place. He hadn't asked for it to be that way, but it was and he knew it full well. But, for that being true, everything had turned explosive since Sasuke had come along and screwed with everything. Naruto had come to blame every misfortune that befell him on the ebony-haired demon-spawn that haunted him so, mostly because most of them were, indirectly, the Uchiha's fault.

His noticing the object of Akamaru's affections so recently wasn't in the least, but, out of habit, he blamed Sasuke anyway, and had absolutely no qualms about doing so; it renewed the flaming hatred in his veins in a very bad attempt at patching himself up. He wasn't very good at patch jobs, or he wouldn't need all the medications he took, but that didn't stop him from trying.

He didn't have to deal with it, and he really had no desire to; the Sasuke matter, that was. It would rear its ugly head problematically every few minutes or so, but he was determined that whatever he felt about it was private and to be kept to himself. This wasn't going anywhere, and that was final. What was to go anywhere, anyway?

Nothing, that's what.

Yes. Denial _had_ to be Naruto's _forte_.

But back to Akamaru and Haku...

He didn't know why it should concern him that Akamaru should fall for the boy. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with him. In fact, Naruto had trouble finding much that _was_ wrong with him: He was beautiful, he was extremely intelligent, he was a gentleman to say the least (assuming you didn't get his gender mixed up, in which case he would've been a gentle_woman,_ instead). He was honest and trustworthy, and certainly friendly enough.

But that was the thing. Even _with_ Haku having all of those things going for him, and Naruto's undeniable like of him, the teacher held seriously negative stance when it came to things between him and the Inuzuka. For one thing, he hardly knew her from what the blonde could tell. Haku was relatively nice to people, even if he didn't know them, but on matters of romance, Naruto had no idea where he stood…and he doubted Akamaru did, either.

For another thing, Naruto couldn't tell if Haku was really who he acted like he was. The boy wore a mask if he'd ever seen one, and he had a bad feeling about what they might find behind it. He hardly suspected anything as dark as self-mutilation, but death could've played a part in it. He wondered if what Akamaru had was a classic case of 'schoolgirl,' and was just in love with what she wanted to see, or thought she saw.

He hated when he spotted relationships like that, and they were everywhere. Superficial and unglued, model popular children get-togethers. 'I like you, you like me's that really only amounted to 'I like what I see, I assume you like what you see's, and held about the same weight and meaning to them as tissue paper. And it was even worse when it was that way, but one-sided, in a way that the opposite party only realized when it came down to saying 'I love you'. Those got really messy, really fast, and Naruto had no desire to get himself into the middle of something even similar.

He also had the sneaking suspicion that Haku was gay.

It wasn't like he had extensive evidence. There was no such thing as 'gaydar', because there was no longer any way for you to know for sure. But as a homosexual man himself, he had eyes for such things. Simple little gestures that he noticed just because they were things that he did too; seeing bits of yourself in other people is easier than seeing them for who they are, after all.

Guessing another person's sexual preference was sticky business. There was the constant possibility (and overall likelihood) that _someone_ would take offense. If it wasn't the person themselves, it was the girlfriend or the boyfriend or the family or the in-laws. If you were going to hazard it, someone had to be mad at you afterwards, just by the nature of the thing. You could never be certain you were right, after all – with all of the crap the media put out, Naruto was amazed there was anyone in the world who could watch television and still argue being straight. Everyone you ever saw on any idiot box was pretty and perfect and willing. So how were you supposed to know for yourself, much less for other people?

Then again, though, if you had good reasoning – and an eye for it (an eye for what exactly, he had not a clue) – you could keep it to yourself and see to what degree it held true. And there were a few dead giveaways that Haku just might be into boys, rather than the good-sized group of females that seemed to fawn over him so shamelessly. A lot of them Naruto could pick out in Sasuke too, actually, and even if he wasn't _half_ going there, he knew for certain that Sasuke had to be bisexual at the very least. (Or maybe he just enjoyed pinning him to random walls and ripping his guts apart? Naruto wouldn't put it past him.)

Just little things – little things he knew that _he_ did whenever he was trying to be non-conspicuous. The overlookable fact that his eyes would linger on boy speakers and pass over their bodies in a more analyzing fashion than they did when they rested on girls. His aversion of being touched often by either gender, whether the contact be friendly or otherwise. (Naruto had found that people either swung one way or the other with that – they either liked it too much, or liked it too little.) That he just subconsciously paid them more apt attention than was normal. The fact that he looked and acted the typical feminine roll of a homosexual had absolutely nothing to do with it. Naruto knew full well how easily boys tended to sound or look gay, even if they were born and bred homophobes (which far too many of them were for the same reasons).

He couldn't say it for certain, of course. He did hate saying things for certain, after all, and there was no way he could really back such an accusation as of yet. To his credit, he had heard the rumors about Haku going behind the AM-PM with seniors for pennies on the dollar, but he didn't like rumors much either, and he didn't really feel like bringing it up with him to see if it was true or not. If it was, it was purely his business and no one else's; and if it wasn't, he would probably never get around to hearing the whole story. It took years if you did it that way, and he figured that what Haku did outside of school didn't much concern him or anyone else, as a few nameless second-years had found out after he'd awarded them a cruel smile and detention for gossiping.

They'd complained, needless to say – quite piteously, even – but Naruto had done careful research to trace the buzzing to its source, and hardly had a temper or ear to hear them out. Sasuke had put him in a bad mood this year, and besides that, he really did hate rumors. More than quite a great assortment of spiteful things, he hated rumors. (It was brought to his attention often how many of those spiteful things originated among teenage girls, but this was far from the point.)

Had it been another teacher, the detentions probably wouldn't have been assigned in the first place, and the punishment – if there _was_ any – would've been much less severe. But it _was_ Naruto. And to go against Naruto was to go against an army of associates and friends he had at his side. Everyone was willing to subside to his judgment and deem it legible, simply because of how strongly he felt on the manner, and how far he had looked into it.

The girls were unhappy with him. But that didn't cramp his style too much.

Heartbreak on Akamaru's part might, though.

Truthfully, he was very worried over it. Not to the point where it kept him awake – despite long bouts of insomnia that would visit him sporadically, Naruto was constantly fatigued by the tumultuous goings on of his loose sense of self and sanity – but to the point where it clouded his thought process very effectively.

That made teaching – and thinking coherently – a difficult process, to say the least.

He caught himself stopping in the middle of the lesson again. He groaned, reaching up from the lectern to pinch the skin just above the bridge of his nose, before dragging them back through his hair. Two dozen eyes blinked at him, ebony among them; Sasuke had returned ten minutes into the class period, giving no excuse for himself as he sat down. Since then, Naruto had found himself being thrown off tangent with ease, not to mention losing sight of everything completely, trailing off into nothingness as he had just done.

"Sensei…?" Akamaru asked from her place in the front row. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, Naruto…you look like shit." Haruno Sakura swung her legs from where she sat on top of Naruto desk. Iruka's class was on one of their many fieldtrips and, as usual, her parents had not allowed her to go. Naruto had specially requested her presence throughout the day, and Umino and the rest of her teachers had agreed to it, so long as she did the work that was required of her. So far, though, she hadn't managed to help him as much as he'd have liked.

"Don't swear," the blonde muttered, automatically. The cherry-blossom frowned at him in a chastising manner ('_You're one to talk_') but said nothing in reply.

"Sensei," Chouji said from the back. "Do you have a hang-over?"

The class laughed collectively, and Naruto chuckled too, caught up in it.

"No. Thanks for asking. You fail."

The class laughed again and Naruto beamed out at them, happy for their company at least, even if he couldn't really think.

"Okay. Somebody help me remember what I was talking about."

Chouji did it hurriedly, flushed from the failure comment, which was something amusing and substantial in its own right. Naruto had the feeling that the boy really did have an interest for the subject as much as he tried to act otherwise around his friends. The blonde kept his bright blue eyes trained on him as the boy slurred and flattered his way through a bit of information about the founding fathers, and then nodded, forcing himself back into the gist of the lesson plan.

Acting okay when nothing was, was hard on him. He knew it plenty well, from the knots in his back to the pain in his temples and the distraction that deadened him. Everything in him was tired, overused and worn. He tried; he tried every ounce of his best to be happy and fun to listen to. And he was…to everyone who didn't really know him that well. To the ones that did it was like hearing glass break – empty and sad and final, like death incarnate.

His reactions were weathered, so much so that when the bell finally rung and he waved everyone out the door (a little too enthusiastically), it was all he could do not to collapse onto one of the tables and go to sleep. He could've, had he really wanted to. He had second period prep, after all. But he didn't, because the few manners Iruka _had_ branded into his brain wouldn't allow for it.

"I'll come get you after school, sensei!" Akamaru said off-handedly as she left, a broad smile on her face. He nodded, and then found himself realizing exactly what was on his mind as it stared over at him with dark eyes. The rest of the class filtered out of the room, leaving them standing, facing one another, like cowboys about to draw, or something to that effect. They looked like hey would've gladly shot each other, truth be told, but as it were, they had no means of doing so.

Sasuke simply stared at him and he stared back for a long while before speaking. He knew the perplexed look Sakura was giving them without having to face it, and figured he'd best rap this up quickly before things got out of hand, and the girl had to witness their attempts to verbally strangle one another.

Naruto turned back to the papers spread out across his lecture stand, stacking them so that he might avoid the boy's eyes. "Consider yourself free of my oppression this afternoon, Uchiha-san."

Said student seemed to go particularly sour at the formality of his tone, although Naruto doubted anyone but him would've ever noticed, unless Sasuke was particularly close to anyone he didn't know about, who would've chanced recognizing the stiff way he held himself now. Somehow, he doubted that too.

"On what grounds, may I ask?"

"I've made arrangements to speak with Inuzuka-chan on private matters." He glanced up, stuffing the papers into the cubby he was provided beneath the slate-like table surface of the platform. Sasuke looked positively murderous, for such a stoic person. Something boiled beneath his skin but he ignored it with every particle of his being, noticing that it felt like something a little less than loathing.

"I'm sure you understand."

There was no question, but the bitterness between them lingered. Naruto couldn't decipher the look Sasuke was giving him for the life in him, which was slightly threatening, but it seemed like something that authentically translated the thoughts of both parties.

_Why the hell are you looking at me like that?_

It couldn't be…

Naruto chuckled then, losing his sense of having a witness for a moment. That was ludicrous. So much so that he felt the need to voice it.

"Jealous?"

Sasuke watched him for a second, before answer quite bluntly.

"Yes."

Naruto twitched slightly as the boy turned on his heel and pushed through the door.

"Have a nice day, then, sensei."

It was a cruel and ironic day, seeing as it came from the mouth that had so easily ruined any chance that Naruto would have one any time soon.

Sakura blinked, bright emerald eyes wide, questioning and childish as she watched Naruto try to go back to moving around like what had just taken place hadn't, indeed, taken place. The moment was dead to him, he said to himself, and he pushed it away from himself forcefully, going back to rummaging in order to keep his perplexed mind as busy as he could.

"What was that about…?"

"Nothing important."

"Something about it has you worried…I'm not stupid, you know."

Naruto nodded absently. "Mm."

"Does he…" The cherry-blossom peered at him. "Does he…_like you_…?"

He shuddered. "No."

"You don't think so, at least."

"Sure. Let's go with that."

"Hm," the girl said, kicking her legs back and forth, back and forth, putting her finger to a corner of her mouth as she thought on it. "No…I've seen the ones that like you like that, and he definitely seems the same, that way. What if he really does like you and you're just not acknowledging it?"

Naruto twitched again.

"That," he said, chewing at the skin of his lower lip, "is precisely what has me so worried."

"Explains a lot," Sakura said, still kicking her legs.

* * *

The Inuzuka Animal Shelter was a mismatched, out-of-the-way sort of place in Noe Valley, and had it not been so far from his own home near the Kubome, Naruto probably would have frequented it, simply because of the magnetic effect such places seemed to have on him. It seemed small on the outside but wasn't really, a one-story sanctuary for strays and veterinary clinic that both Inuzuka parents, and their eldest daughter Hana, managed. The twins managed the cages and orientation of the Shelter's inhabitants to humans.

Naruto had always felt a strange attraction to strays; animals (and humans) with no place to belong and no home to return to. The Shelter had plenty of them, of all varieties: cats, rodents by the ton, birds that bit, a raccoon with a missing leg and a gorgeous pair of swans that had been illegally imported into the United States. And the dogs. There was a countless number of dogs, and the entire facility was full to the brim with them. It was obvious that neither child had been lying in saying that they liked dogs. To the contrary, both seemed to know each individual as a very old friend.

Akamaru was crouched over a German Shepard pup, stroking its belly, while Naruto struggled to keep a large golden Labrador-pitbull mix from unseating him, laughing hard as the dog washed his face thoroughly with its tongue. The girl smiled over at him as a shorthair terrier came over to beg for her attention by tugging at the jeans she wore. (She'd changed upon there arrival at the home – both had: Kiba was across the way, herding about what seemed to be a pack of collies and the like.)

"Man, she just adores you, sensei."

Naruto coughed, rubbing the dog's floppy ears with a grin. "Yeah…she's a sweetie. What's her name?"

"Nonki," she said, without missing a beat. "She's been here around three months – Kiba brought her in off the highway after some jackass hit her with a car. Tags, but they were too old…we think the owner moved and couldn't keep her, so they left her here. It's a shame, especially when we're talking about Nona-chan, isn't it baby?" The dog trotted over to relieve the girl's upset expression with some well-placed licks. "It's okay though…I think my brother likes her a lot. She's really shy around loud people – which is why it was such a surprise when she latched right on to you – but she and Kiba-niichan get along real well, so I don't think we'll try adopting her out."

Naruto nodded, smiling and patting the dog's head. Nonki wagged her tail hard and came back to nuzzle his hand. "He'll take good care of her, I have no doubt." He glanced over at Akamaru with faked annoyance. "…Are you suggesting that I'm loud, by any chance?"

The girl laughed, openly. "Only a whole lot!" The puppy she'd been ignoring for a few minutes crawled into her lap, barking at the terrier, who jumped but stuck around stubbornly. She waved them apart, still laughing at the notion of Naruto being anything other than obnoxious. The teacher laughed as well, agreeing with her.

"So," she said finally, looking over at him. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

Naruto did his best to avoid blanching. He didn't like it but they _had_ to talk about this. He needed to see how deep in she was, just for his own curiosity's sake, but at the same time he needed to make sure he didn't over impose his position, or get in too deep. The last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable.

That was oddly ironic, seeing who he was to Akamaru and what he had come here to discuss.

She blinked over at him and he sighed, deciding that bluntness was his best friend at this moment.

"Akamaru…do you like Haku?"

A blush immediately bloomed out over the girl's nose and cheeks, bold and unyielding to any of her indignant attempts to smother it. Naruto figured that was enough of an answer to his question but it wasn't as if you could just walk away from such a conversation, having started it yourself.

The girl sighed after a small silence and smiled shyly to herself, entwining her hands in front of her knees.

"You noticed, huh?"

Naruto ruffled the hair of the shepherd who came to him for attention, now.

"Yeah, I did...I'm sorry, it's not really any of my business-"

"Don't worry about it sensei." Akamaru directed her smile at him now. "You're my teacher. Of course it's your business."

Naruto nodded, feeling guilty but returning the smile. "Thank you."

Akamaru nodded, still blushing. Naruto progressed with as much caution as he possibly could.

"How long have you-"

Akamaru took the puppy from him, seeming to need a way to distract herself. Naruto didn't mind, seeing as it was better than he delaying the conversation or twiddling her thumbs. She rubbed behind its ears and he noticed how jittery she was; how much the subject matter excited her. Even if Naruto was, by far, her superior, it was typical female behavior to enjoy talking about the object of her current affection.

That made him worry.

"Oh, I don't remember exactly...we kept bumping into each other at really awkward intervals. There was this one time late last month that Kiba and I had been arguing...I was crying and I went to the arcade down the road to ease my stress a little bit and I lost track of this guy..." she rubbed the dog's ears in a motherly way, expression soft. "Haku-san just came out of nowhere and helped me look for him...then he helped me stop crying and told me I was a smart person, even if I didn't think so." She buried her face in the puppy's fur, blushing. "It was so nice..."

Naruto chuckled. "Haku's a very kind person, isn't he?"

Akamaru nodded rapidly, getting swept in it and turning to him with a broad grin. "He really is! He's so nice to everyone around him, and yet so mysterious...I don't know anything about his home situation or anything, or really anything about his past, but I really like him anyway! He's so pretty and quiet and...and..." She trailed off, her entire face gone pink, looking out at the courtyard full of dogs.

"_Haku-san wa..._that is..._saa...Haku-san wa...anohito wa hontō ni hontō ga suki da na._" _That person is the one I really, really like._

Naruto sighed, trying to be happy for her. Trying was, of course, the key word there.

This was bad.

If what he suspected was true, this was very bad.

"Are you sure?"

He wondered if the seriousness of his tone would make Akamaru flinch. It was unreasonably cold, even though he hadn't meant it to be. She didn't though. She remained motionless and smiling for a moment before looking over at him.

"Yeah. I am."

Naruto swallowed hard, trying very hard not to let his discomfort show. That was very, very bad.

The phone ringing shrilly from the other room made him jump. Tsume, the two siblings' mother, leaned her head through the awning of the doorway that led out to the cages, peering around. She was a fearsome looking woman with hair that seemed spiked, eye-makeup to rival an emo kid, and a no-nonsense aura around her (Naruto could understand Akamaru's admitted fear of Tsume's wrath). She wore a lab coat and waved a cordless phone in her hands.

"Naruto-sensei," she said, calling his attention to him. "Someone's calling for you."

"Eh...?" Naruto blinked. _What the heck?_

"A man named Hatake Kakashi," Tsume said, opening the cage door and moving the dogs away with her foot almost dully. "You ought to talk to him out near the entrance - the dogs make quite a racket on the phone lines."

Naruto nodded dumbly. Kakashi? Why was _Kakashi_ calling him at the Inuzuka residency?

How would Kakashi have known to _reach him_ at the Inuzuka residency...? It wasn't as if he had felt obligated to tell anyone where he was going because it wasn't a big deal and it wasn't going to take very much time, so he hadn't. Maybe Yohko had panicked...? That wasn't like her though.

He took the phone from her fingers and walked down the hall out to where the entry way was. He leaned against the front desk and shrugged the receiver to his ear, looking over the room.

"What is it?"

"Are you close to a television?"

Naruto tensed at the sound of Kakashi's voice - tightened and serious. He felt himself go cold, his stomach twisting into knots. Kakashi only spoke like that when...

_Oh no..._

Kakashi only spoke like that when something was wrong. Really wrong.

"Uh..." He was nervous, now. This wasn't good. He took the phone a bit away from his mouth and shouted down the hall, trying to keep himself from seeming as restless as he felt now. "Naa, Tsume-san? May I use your television?"

The woman replied with a loose, swift tone. "Sure - it's in the cabinet behind the desk!"

Sure enough, as he slipped the wooden coverings open the black screen reflected his worried face back into his eyes. He took the phone to his ear again, pressing the on switch. He was fighting very, very hard to stay calm, which was very hard with the way his throat was constricting.

"Which channel?"

"Seven. Get there fast."

Naruto jabbed the keys down as quickly as he could manage, feeling as if he might irreversibly fumble sometime soon. It was difficult to keep the phone from falling with it balanced upon his collar and both of his hands occupied, but somehow he coped with it. Something was very, very wrong, for Kakashi to be talking like that. The numbers in the corner blinked as the channels flipped by, before seven was highlighted in blue.

Naruto stared at the screen, his eyes wide and tinted with the color the glared at him from the screen.

An anchorwoman occupied the wide oak desk, with brown lips and skin and greasy looking black hair, her hands folded neatly in front of her. She was progressing onwards from a story about wine and prisoners to the big story of the night, which scrolled beneath her. A logo in the bottom right corner of the display rotated slowly. "Channel Seven News" it said. It would've all seemed ordinary if Naruto hadn't been so overpowered by the moving image that soon enveloped the entire monitor.

"...crowds, just after emerging from his home in Japan for the first time, last week, since his retirement six-and-a-half-years ago. Mr. Tazuna, who lost his son-in-law, the ever-popular Gōki Kaiza, to hit men of the opposing political party two years prior to that retirement, had this to say to his rallying supporters in Washington."

Tazuna was unmistakable with his glasses, wide girth and dark grey hair. He stood, tall and strong-looking, in front of the masses, dressed in a starched suit to match his beard, hands folded behind his back as his voice boomed out, his English flawless except for an almost unnoticeable lisp that undermined his 'r's and 'l's.

"These past few years have, indeed, been difficult for me; as I'm sure the press was informed this morning, my daughter and her son Inari's location are still unknown. But, with that hardship and difficulty has come serious insight on my part. Inspiration and ideas as to how I can continue to make the world a better place, and enable even the weakest of people with the ability to defend themselves and form their own beliefs. I want a happy planet for my grandson's memory to cherish, and for what would've been his children to play in. I want safety and security for those who do not know what it is.

"I will not give up the fight! These are my dreams, and I am going to find a person who can work with me to make sure that they are secured. I will _not_ rest until we have created something admirable out of our Mother Earth. I plan to complete my building in San Francisco, and it will act as a beacon of hope for people everywhere! It will as a beacon for everything this country stands for! Freedom of oppression! Freedom of fear! I will _not_ give up the fight!"

He had begun to gesticulate widely as his speech became more emotional, and now he jabbed the air with his meaty fist to better punctuate his determination. The crowd exploded with uproarious applause.

Naruto stared.

Kakashi's voice on the other end of the phone startled him out of a daze. The man was quiet, seeming contemplative for whatever his reason was. Personally, Naruto couldn't find much about the situation that was worth contemplating.

"He's got some nerve, mm?"

"Oh my God."

The receiver loosed itself from Naruto cold, clammy fingers and hit the floor with an angry clatter. He stared, gaping, unmoving, and unable to believe what had just happened. That...oh God...it couldn't be. Tazuna couldn't possibly...

"That mother-fucking bastard."

His blood twitched with agitation and a dire need to scream.

_That asshole._

He stared at the screen a while longer before glancing down at the phone and bending jerkily to pick it up. He did not rise again, however, his knees giving out as he flopped onto the floor. Asshole. Asshole. He couldn't do that. He couldn't...

"He can't _do_ that!"

Naruto's voice was hot with fury, loud and obnoxious and unrelenting. Kakashi sighed, voice becoming much more appropriate in regards to the situation. Naruto didn't care if the tone made him feel like crying. There was no fucking way Tazuna could get away with this and not - at the very least - make them both very, _very_ angry.

"He can't fucking _do_ that!"

"I know."

"He's endangered all of us by doing this, Kakashi! It's his own business if he gets himself off-ed, but he's deliberately drawing us all into it by coming here of all places! He can't do that! He's putting us all in danger!"

"Watch the rest of the report, Naruto."

He really didn't need to tell him twice. The sound of gunshots, however faint, coming from the speakers, made him jump to attention.

The clip was blurred, filmed unprofessionally, with a date and time blinking across the top, courtesy of the camcorder. However, it clearly showed a grinning Tazuna, surrounded by bodyguards, as he descended the steps of a private jet liner. The bang rang out and he toppled, screams rippling out of everywhere.

Naruto's eyes were wide with associated memories.

"...taken today, by a spectator, shows us Mr. Tazuna's new predicament. Although police report that the wound to the man's shoulder was far from lethal, the perpetrator has not been found. He is currently being housed at a local hospital..."

The drone of the woman's voice nearly drowned out the unneeded explanation.

The blonde had stopped thinking a while ago.

"Kakashi...he's killed us."

"I know."

"Kakashi...he's _killed us_. All of us. His own grandson. All of us."

"He's staying at the Kubome, Naruto."

Naruto just sat there and tried to breathe. In, out. In, out. Why was that so impossible right now?

"Has...has Yohko...does Yohko know?" He was choking on air and his own words.

"Yohko is the one that demanded I call each one of your student's houses in order to figure out where you were. She's frantic."

"Frantic?"

"Tazuna isn't the problem. Not directly, anyway. He may or may not have killed us by coming here, but that's the least of our worries right now."

"What?"

"Naruto...Inari's gone."

* * *

**End Chapter 09**

-mellowing in the rising steam off of her hot chocolate- Naa...so many things begin and end in January...it's enchanting. Finals are done and so's the first semester...hurrah...and now I can work on Chapter Ten...Chapter Ten, Chapter Ten, I'm so happy...

...I'm a little out of it, please excuse me.

Still, I know have three BETAs instead of one, which is wonderful, naa...I feel so supported. A big thankyou to **Katana**, **Jyari**, **Selene-chan**, and **Arcane-sama**...you guys are really cool for being so nice to me.

This chapter took a while to get done for whatever reason. It made me happy though, because the ending was so suspenseful...yay suspensefulness...

Oh, and thankyou so much for the **100**th review...I feel like I'm on a roll...**Kiriban number is 111**. For my **111**th reviewer, I will grant any request of art or written pieces...just so everyone knows.

If any of the Japanese in there is dreadfully wrong or you can't live with yourself because you don't know what it means...well, then e-mail me or write about it in your review...

It's 12:15...!

Naa...I love Inuzuka Tsume-chan with all my heart... -dreamy eyes-

--_Lady Lamb_


	11. Next Stall Over

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Drama

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...SasuNaru, yaoi

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** -blithering like an idiot- OMIGOD IT'S FINALLY CHAPTER TENTENTENTENTEN! This marks a huge milestone for me; I have never in my life kept a fan fiction going this long, or made this many people happy by doing something that made me happy! It's amazing, and I'd like to thank all of you for making this possible for me. My debut as a yaoi authoress hasn't gone half as badly as I thought it would and I am so happy! Arigatou, ne… I hope you enjoy the read. (Bet on it being confusing, if you weren't already. Why? Cuz - tada! - I'm like that. xD Smooches!)

**Note:** It's like Gaara: addictive, psychotic, and _gay gay gay gay gay_. With nice legs. Gaara has very nice legs.

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2006. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_By The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 10**

**" Bleeding girl in the**

**next stall over.** "

Naruto had a way of never understanding his own actions, when it came right down to it. There was a long, lingering part of his life that had been dictated completely by other people's decisions where he had just kind of lost track of himself, and that had a way of catching him by surprise. He'd just stopped really interacting with his brain, and it caught up with him, sometimes.

No, it was his feet that usually made his decisions, now. He had a well-justified fear of cars and their trapped interiors, and the same went for buses. Airplanes were out of the question just based on how much he hated having to be that close to people he didn't now for that long of an extended period – where the hell was he going to go that he needed an airplane, anyway? Trains weren't so bad, but with his luck, he usually ended up riding them when they were in the one condition he couldn't tolerate: empty. So, with no other real way to travel, he walked.

That wasn't so bad, relative to where he was situated. Never let anyone tell you that San Francisco isn't a pedestrian city; it is. To say otherwise is to make a mockery of everything San Francisco stands for. It's true that the city is rather large, but not 'LA' large. Everywhere is accessible if your legs are strong enough – hills get to be less of a distraction and more of just a regular occurrence to be overlooked. And Naruto's were definitely strong enough.

So if he was going somewhere, he was walking. It's true that Naruto accepted rides from Kakashi, but not on a regular basis. His house was close to school, but that was only for convenience-purposes. He liked walking, really, even if he never listed it as a hobby. He got around the city, too, and he made his rounds pretty easily. Hardly ran anywhere – just walked. Naruto walked everywhere, and reasonably so. Everything was usually in walking distance.

_Yamanaka Hanahazukashii_, state-of-the-art flower shop and beauty parlor was no exception.

Not that he'd known he was going there before hand. After all, his feet did the thinking. Not him.  
Truthfully it had been rather rude and undistinguished to depart in the manner he had. Truthfully, though, he didn't entirely mind. Desperate times called for desperate (if not callous) measures. This time counted. Inari and Yohko flooded his panicked thoughts entirely. And so, he had said nothing to anyone, really, slammed the telephone receiver down, and bowed himself out with utmost haste.

_'Where could he have **gone**?'_

It was a bad situation. Very bad. For Tazuna to come around so suddenly only to be shot down, and then for his only grandson to disappear on the same day - the evidence was extremely incriminating. Even if the man was in his fifties, was in the hospital, was suffering a gunshot wound to the shoulder, he also was extremely wealthy, and was more than very deserving of Naruto's criticisms. He was setting them all up for failure - affecting the lives of people who wanted only to be hidden. It was one thing, one simple little thing, and he was ruining it in his futile attempts to prove a ridiculous point. Naruto wouldn't have hesitated to blame Tazuna for all their dooms.

And, consequentially, he didn't.

He barreled down the street, not running but walking very briskly, long coat barred against the late October wind that swept up against his chest and ruffled his hair. He felt like he was pacing, going back and forth, and yet was fully aware (as he jostled through the tightly packed crowds on the sidewalk) that he was going forward. Or at least, he was traveling in only one given direction. 'Forward' was always based on relativity.

At any rate, he knew where he was going. Kind of. In a 'I'll get wherever I'm getting to eventually' kind of way. He was far too lost in thought to focus on anything else. Everything in his head was tumbling about, chaotic and hectic and whirling in a way that made his stomach clench most painfully. He had to find him. Absolutely had to. Children didn't just go missing randomly - not children who had guardians like Inari did. Yohko panicked far too easily for most people's tastes, but she was well justified and if anything it kept her children better protected than if they'd been born to an international celebrity. That wasn't to say she didn't let them do as they pleased a lot of the time, but she did so with a great amount of moderation.

She kept those kids close. _Real_ close, in a way that was probably suffocating from where they stood. But her fear for them was real and they knew it well enough not to complain. They honestly didn't know too much to the contrary, so it wasn't as if they were going to battle to get away from their mother whenever they got the chance. They were very sensitive when it came to Yohko's mood fluctuations, and understood better than anyone the woman's instability. They trusted her for the most part, but they knew what they couldn't do, what would hurt her. They were too considerate to just go running off that irresponsibly.

Inari wouldn't have just left. It was true that he didn't get along with Yohko all the time, or see her as a mother to the extent that Konohamaru did, but he was careful. He didn't anger her or make her cry on purpose anymore, the way he had when he was younger. Even when he had done such things, when he was three and four, he would've never thought once of running away. He knew what was out there, what she was trying to protect him from almost as well as she did.

It was the stuff that was out there that they feared the most, after all. Naruto coughed harshly into a balled fist that caught it before his brain really had time to register that it had come. The air was unreasonably cold today, he thought. He shook his head, upset. He needed a plan. A battle strategy. The only thing that really occurred to him was that he was following his feet up South Van Ness, past lots of quaint little shops filled of small things that did not interest him even on a good day. Where was he going? Graphing it out rather roughly in his head, Yohko had probably already walked the Castro several thousand times, and Kakashi was on Market. He needed to check other places in that area, and he was a while away, a few blocks down near 19th. Strategically speaking, walking wasn't going to be his best option at the moment, but off the top of his head he couldn't recall any alternate modes of transportation available that didn't strike down hard on any of his phobias.

He hesitated for a second, though, something occurring to him. He reevaluated his position. If he kept walking northward, as he was right now, he would hit Enterprise first, in, oh, give or take two blocks. And then what...? Well, from there, if he really couldn't go anywhere except on foot, he was going to have to turn left and walk for a few more block until he hit Ramona, then travel that up until he hit Clinton Park. That would take way too much time. It was four-thirty now. If he took that route on foot, even if he walked as quickly as he could, it would take at least a hour, and that was easily the difference between light and darkness. The sun was already dangling tediously low in the sky - it was October after all. He coughed again, trying to warm his cold fingers. There had to be some quicker way to travel.

It then occurred to him just in what direction he was traveling, and on which street.

_'Wait a second...'_

He was on Van Ness and - he looked over at the street sign as he walked another crosswalk - 17th just now. Given the direction he was going...Enterprise was directly in front of him, and then...

He moved his fingers nervously. The idea would be imposing upon Ino's hospitality, but the situation was rather dire.

He ought to at least give it a shot.

Okay, so that meant walking past Capp, crossing the intersection at Enterprise and...

* * *

_  
Yamanaka Hanahazukashii_, unlike most stores of its name was not located all that near Little Osaka. The word 'hanahazukashii' means 'beauty that could put a flower to shame' and it was well chosen. Warranted, very few customers out of the tidal wave that flowed in on a regular basis could've known that, but it was quite the hotspot as it was. At first it hadn't advertised at all, but it had become quite the popular little joint simply by word of mouth with a speed to rival the sound barrier. Now it was almost everywhere. It wasn't part of a chain (had it been, the name would've been catchier) but it was well-kept and respectable for what it was; the revolutionary idea to conjoin both a beauty parlor and flower shop so that the two complimented one another. 

Mind, the entire operation was pretty unorthodox. The location could've been more ideal, the customers less ditzy and the manager a little bit older, and (if at all possible) a high school graduate, which - at the age of seventeen - Yamanaka Ino was not. She was smart when it came to most things. That wasn't the arguable point. But intelligence, for both her and the majority of her family, was disregard able if the need arose. And when it came to the Yamanaka's the need arose far more often than it would have with most people. Passionate dreaming came before education, as evidenced by the fact that Ino's father had been the first in their family to even attend college, and that in itself was considered an achievement.

It wasn't a bad thing so much as it was a little unusual. But the Yamanaka's were headstrong people who knew what they wanted out of life and were determined to get it, one way or another. As far as safety went for a girl of Ino's age and build, Natoma was a blessing. Sure, it wasn't uptown, nor was it downtown, but it wasn't Candlestick, and it didn't get the pretty little windows in front punched out every day or two, so everything was good. It also had a duplex upstairs where the young woman could live relatively peacefully, and so long as that was true, Naruto had opted to let her go about things her own way.

The shop was relatively empty when he got there, for it being a weekday. Of course, he thought, most people hadn't gotten off of work yet. It was a good thing, too. Both the bins outside full of white and lavender African Irises, and the marble-tiled floors of the salon were empty of witnesses to Naruto's jitters. Had there been, he would've had a lot of explaining to do, seeing the kind of customers his former student tended to attract: over-sympathizing, melo-dramatic chatterboxes, the whole lot of them. They weren't all women of course, but they all pretty much acted the same way.

The girl he was currently pursuing was bent over the counter, her silky blonde hair up in a high ponytail. The way she had positioned herself, ballpoint pen halfway between her teeth and elbows on the counter, propping up her face, she seemed to be engrossed with a ledger of some sort. The small bells on the door jingled, signally Naruto's arrival as he clattered in out of the street, looking ruffled, and she blinked up at him, looking surprised.

She seemed to only stay surprised for a few moments, though, recovering from his entrance quickly enough and turning back to her notepad. She spoke to him offhandedly as always, seeming used to his tendencies to burst in with a flurry of smoke, a ragged appearance, and a large amount of fear-induced hyper activity. "Oh, hey there, sexy. You want something?"

Naruto raised an eyebrow at her tiredly, cheeks flushed from the cold air outside. Ino could be a really talented flirt without putting her mind to it at all. The fact that that didn't bother him as much as it should have bothered him, having been her teacher only a year prior.

"Do you deck yourself out in purple deliberately, or just because it's all you have to wear?" The teacher gestured to her clothes of choice: a low-cut top, combat boots and worn-out denim jeans that were probably the height of fashion, all the aforementioned shade of plum.

"Do you always act stupid or can't you help it?" Ino said, shrugging in a way that made her golden hoop earrings jangle.

Naruto sighed. "Listen. I need a ride."

Ino glanced up, tone gone serious. "Where to?"

"Up near Yohko's place."

Ino sighed. "I can't take you now. You're gunna need to wait."

"This can't wait, Ino."

She stood up, giving him an analytical look. "Well, it's gunna need to. That, or you're going to have to walk."

"Inari's missing."

She blinked.

"What?"

"They can't find him anywhere. He's gone."

Ino's eyes seemed to harden, gone deep, and she folded her arms. "Since when? How long's he been gone?"

"Since three, give or take."

She put a hand to her lips, pensive. "That's no good...he's way too little to be running around who-knows-where for that long..." She looked him in the eye. "Okay, so it's important, I got it. Doesn't change the fact that I can't give you a ride right now..." She looked off for a second, thinking hard, before looking to him again. "Can you drive yourself...?"

Naruto nodded. "You got a helmet?"

Ino walked behind the counter and reached under it, bringing one out and flinging it at him. He caught it easily enough, full in the chest. It looked like it would fit. Not that he really minded. If it didn't he would just have to make do. By law he had to have one on; he didn't have to have one on that fit properly, just one that would stay on his head. Most people would intuitively think that the two things naturally coincided, but Naruto was not most people, and knew better.

He lifted it, looking it over. Ino went to the register, popped open the drawer and lifted out a pair of keys that jingled incessantly, and glistened in the lighting. She tossed them directly at his head and he caught them without problem, the helmet situated on his other hand. When he looked over she was already at the back, pushing through the transparent curtains at the end of the corridor that held the bathrooms, and motioned quickly for him to follow.

They walked, him behind her, through the plastic gateway into a brightly lit greenhouse, with high ceilings. It smelled nice, and contained warmth that Naruto wasn't used to at this time of year. The air was tropical, alive with the wet, balmy fragrance of the plants that bloomed in all greens, exotic blues and magentas and pinks, all around them. Through the window sky-light above them, Naruto could see the burnt light of the sun filtering through the soft fog that was beginning to haze as a sunset became inevitable.

At the end of the greenhouse, they encountered another solid wall and a thick steel door that Ino opened without hesitation. Again Naruto followed her through it, hit immediately by a chill that ran through him and made goose bumps spring up all across his skin. All around, lilies and other delicate flowers were settled in bins of water. Through another door and they were out in a back alley, gleaming motorcycle in front of them.

Naruto whistled, despite himself. There was nothing to help his appreciation for healthy machinery.  
Ino leaned back, chest puffed out, seeming as proud of it as he figured she had a right to be. "Yeah...she's pretty, you've got to admit." She looked over at him, smiling. "Take good care of her, hm?"

Naruto nodded absently. "_Oh_ yeah." He looked back at her. "You sure he won't mind...?"

Ino laughed loudly. "You think I care?" She punched him lightly in the arm. "He left it here. If he wasn't anticipating me using it, he should've kept the keys. And you'll be careful - you're not as bad a driver as Sakura, or anything. So get out there and find our boy, won'tcha? It'll be fine."

"Him anticipating you using it is way different is way different than you auctioning it off like this," Naruto chuckled.

Ino shrugged. "Hey, if it comes right down to it, he's way too lazy to come after you."

Well, he couldn't argue with that.

He jammed the helmet on his head - it fit very well, as it were - and moved to buckle the underside. "I can't thank you enough Ino."

She waved him off. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just find your kid and bring 'im back in one piece."

* * *

When Naruto pulled up to the Kubome the sun had long sunk behind the horizon. The fog clouded both judgment of civilians around him and the moonlight that should've shown down upon him. As it was, the headlight of the motorcycle was more than enough as it purred to a stop in the parking lot, and he cut the engine. He clenched and unclenched his hands and stretched his shoulders to try and choke out some of the stubborn cold that had seeped in through the folds of his skin. The wind had refused to die down and was only made all-the-more bitter by his riding through it the past two-and-a-half hours. 

He hadn't found a thing, needless to say, or he would've been in much higher spirits. It wasn't that he hadn't searched everywhere. He had. He'd searched high and low, low and high. Places he knew Yohko and Kakashi would've checked three billion times before. There was always a chance, his brain told him. Always a chance that his 'one more time' would make some significant difference. He'd run Market up and down from end to end, which is no easy feat, and he'd made the circuit thrice. He'd veered off into back allies and corner stores all the way.

He'd checked everywhere, turned the whole city upside down and shook it for good measure. _Everywhere_, from places they went daily, to places they went monthly and annually, to places they'd only visited once. He coasted past the Café they all went to for brunch on holidays; he rode through the wide, empty streets where he knew they played with the other kids. He even went past the Mission District a ways, just to see if he could find anything at all to act as indicant of what to do next.

But no. There was nothing. Not hide nor hair nor puff of dust nor tire track to suggest where he might have disappeared to. And he truly had. Disappeared, that is. There was no evidence, no anything. They had to find him, but there was no way they could, going off of how long they had kept up their search and how little they had turned up. And, of course, they couldn't go to the police...not directly...

So they were pretty well stuck. And it was more than likely that Yohko was going nuts.

He knew _he_ was.

He unclipped the helmet and remembered the very useless fact that he had no way of really securing the bike in place. How the hell did Ino keep it from being stolen? Just leaving it out on the back walk...that was absolutely ridiculous. Not entirely unlike her, but ridiculous nonetheless. With his luck, he was amazed that it was still under him. There wasn't much to be done about it, of course. He'd found a parking space and that was what he was going to go off as what would probably be the only luck he had that evening.

He put the kickstand down and took the keys from the ignition, leaning the bike over as he climbed off of the seat. Pushing the keys into his back pocket, he reached up and removed the helmet, still rather lost in thought. He tucked it under his arm with a sigh. Well, if this was the only thing he could do... Taking care of Yohko was going to be hell if he knew her at all; she would either be loud and screaming, or soft and anti-social, both relatively dangerous states of mind for her to be in and likely accompanied by crying. Chances were they would have her in with _someone_ who was more used to seeing her while she was having her 'fits', and the two of them would be quarantined off to the side...

That didn't give him a huge amount of wiggle room. Not that he was about to criticize the procedure, Yohko the very least. He knew better than anyone what she'd been through just to get those kids. She breathed them in; their presence was the very reason she was stable enough not to live in a _world_ of fits. He couldn't keep her out of an asylum anymore. He wasn't around enough. They kept her upright, though, despite her violent mood swings and mental problems that should keep her in a hospital. They kept her _functioning_, and they worked as a pair. With one of those elements removed, Yohko was thrown into a piece of reality that clashed very abrasively with her state of mental wellbeing.

He was walking up the walk when he first noticed them. The lights coming off the Kubome were faulty, which was fitting in regards to its resources, and it flickered like a strobe, illuminating the two for just a second. But Naruto knew to trust his instincts - he'd been _trained_ to trust his instincts - and what he'd seen was far from a mistake. He knew what he had seen. It made his stomach jump, for no apparent reason, to know exactly what he'd seen. But just that slight shift in the bushes beside him assured him that it was worth pursuing, and he stepped off the side of the concrete, walked three feet so that he'd better angled himself, and marveled at the view.

Those rumors about Haku, it seemed, would not prove entirely false. But that didn't mean it wasn't quite the sight to behold. Zabuza rarely ever took the ribbons away from his face, after all, and Naruto (who had never seen Haku outside of an academic setting) was not at all surprised with the boy's fashion sense, with seemed to revolve around fishnet at this time. He wasn't sure he would've have bothered with the fact if Zabuza's fingers hadn't been intertwined in it and his tongue hadn't been halfway down the very compliant throat of the boy in question. They both smelled very much like sex. It emanated off of them even, where they were on the ground, with the drug dealer on top of the schoolboy whose legs were slung around his waste in a very drunk fashion. Haku's hair seemed significantly longer when he was lying down, and it was strewn all about them like a sheet.

Naruto raised an eyebrow, mostly because he wasn't sure he was supposed to react. It was undeniable that they looked very good together. It was also rather undeniable that his suspicions were more than confirmed. That, of course, apart from the fact that some of his mother hen instincts were having aneurisms over the fact that this was definitely as bad as it looked: gay crack-dealer-on-illegal-minor-statutory-rape-sex-thing, it was. Or something of that nature. He didn't know how to react even emotionally; surprise was ruled out rather quickly, and filled in by a weird mix of anguish, disgust, and sexual appeal. Whichever came first, he reasoned.

In light of the situation, maybe it would've been better if he hadn't been noticed in the first place. But it wasn't as if he was just going to walk away. How the hell did you walk away from something like that? The ability eluded him. It was odd, actually, how Zabuza was the one to notice him first. He was, after all, the one with the lesser opportunity to do so. Somehow, though, in pulling out of Haku's mouth, the man chanced a glimpse at him, where he stood over him.

"Ah...wouldja look a'that? It's Uzumaki." He was nothing short of breathless, but he seemed to mask it well as he sat up off of Haku's chest. He looked completely at ease with the entire situation, which was not unlike him. Naruto knew that look he wore. The 'oh, don't mind the person I'm having sex with, talk with me old chum' look. It was really creepy. Who pulled out of hormones that quickly? Only friends of his, of course...that figured.

Naruto quirked his eyebrow a wee bit higher. "Having fun?"

Zabuza chuckled. "Jealous?"

"Of him?" Naruto put his hands on his hips, wrinkling his face and shaking his head lighter. "_Nah_. Your sense of a romantic getaway scares me to say the least. I mean, c'mon, a hospital? You could'na done better?"

Haku blinked up at him, seeming to have recovered his breath. It was easy to see that he was considerably more surprised than Zabuza - that, or much more caught up in the mood - but he handled himself pretty much the same way, taking it all in and using what reaction he had sparingly. The two of them kept their cool remarkably well, Naruto noticed.

Zabuza nodded to the helmet. "Been out and about? Tha's unlike you."

Naruto shrugged. "I guess."

"Are you looking for something, sensei?"

Naruto met his eyes for the first time that evening and smiled weakly. "Yeah...kinda. How are yuh sweetie?"

"I can't really complain, sensei."

"That's good." Naruto looked back at Zabuza. "You better not giv'im some sorta STD, punkass."

"Oh, look who's talkin'."

"Have yuh seen Inari?"

Zabuza coughed out a laugh. "Why are you asking _me_? I haven't seen much of anything except this one for a good coupla hours now."

"Cuz I'm askin' just about e'rybody. Listen, I know this'll be rather difficult considering the most compromising situation I've found you in, but could yuh please keep an eye out for him?" Naruto shifted his weight from foot to foot. The cold was tiring out his legs, and making them sore. He was just itching to move, but Zabuza was one of the most mobile people he knew. Not necessarily reliable, but that wasn't what he was after right now.

"You _lost a kid_?" Zabuza whistled. "Man, no wonder the bitch was way bitchier than normal."

Naruto did not half restrain his urge to land a blow to the side of the Momoichi's skull.

"Hey!"

"Not now, pookie." Naruto's voice was full of protective malice, and came out in a low growl. Zabuza rubbed at the spot to the side of his head, still giving him a look.

"Yer in one helluva mood."

"Yeah. Thanks fer noticing."

Zabuza shrugged. "I've been over to Japantown and back, today. Di'nt see anyone tha' looked like Inari. Sorry, bitch."

Naruto sighed and reached up to rub it his head. "Kay."

"How long you been lookin'?"

Naruto held up three fingers, his eyes closed against a pounding headache.

"_Hours_? **Damn**."

"Yeah. Long day."

Zabuza shook his head lightly. "You should'na whacked me so hard. I didn' know yuh'd been out that long."

"Yeah, I know." Naruto watched him. Haku looked pensive from under him, even with his hair and clothing mussed the way it was. Naruto dug into his back pocket and flipped open his wallet. "Only got eighty bucks though." He dug the four twenties out and flicked them at his friend's face.

"What for?"

Naruto shrugged. "Food. Shelter. Whatever you want."

"Can I pay to get somebody knocked?"

"Off? Or up? S'long as it ain't me or anyone I know, I really don't care."

Zabuza jabbed his fist into the air. Naruto snorted.

"Take care of yerself, yuh slimeball."

"Can do."

Naruto turned and stepped back onto the path with ease, walking up a ways before he heard Haku call out to him.

"Naruto-sensei."

He stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Hm?"

"Will you be in school tomorrow?"

"Maybe. Why?"

"No reason...just out of curiosity."

Naruto smiled at him.

"Make Zabuza buy you something nice, Haku."

The boy half-laughed. "I'll think about it, sensei."

Naruto nodded and went the rest of the way up the walk, and through the double-sliding glass doors of the hospital, musing over the fact that he almost never saw the whole of that boy smile. It was either his mouth or his eyes that didn't participate. He wondered for a second, as the doors slid closed just behind him, if he should bother telling anyone.

But the sounds of screaming echoing around the hospital reassured him that he truly had no desire to cause that many people pain. In fact, he didn't have the desire to cause anyone pain, now or ever.

He just ended up at fault because he was the wrong type of person.

But whatever.

* * *

It should be dually noted that, with as powerful a voice as she had, Yohko's screaming was a force to be reckoned with. She wasn't an Uzumaki for nothing - they were loud, violent people even when they didn't mean to be. So when their tempers (or sanity, as the case may have been) was scraped away and they actually got to the point where they were those two things _intentionally_, the product was something that most people would've looked at as a fate worse than death for any witness. When they got angry they got really angry, and if paired with sadness, that rage was doubled in potency. Perhaps they did, indeed, feel too much for their own good, and when it came out, it came out like a siren. 

When Naruto had arrived on the scene, he'd been able to identify his cousin's location by his ears alone. One would've thought that three hours of being angry beyond all reason would've worn a person down. But Uzumaki's weren't like that. Stamina was their strong suit, if anything, and if they were angry, they stayed angry until convinced otherwise. It was one of the reasons that Naruto was one of the only people who could reason with his cousin when she was like this, and vice versa; everyone else got too tired to deal with them after awhile.

He signed himself in and asked no questions. He didn't need to. He'd known the general direction he was heading to begin with, but with all the sound to aid him, he knew pretty much exactly where to go. Down the central corridor, past the elevator and under the sign reading 'Psychiatric Ward'. Follow the echoing crashes and tortured voices until you come to the first door that's surrounded by people. It wasn't so hard to find as it was to listen to.

Of the gathered crowd, he could identify three as nurses he had never met, Kakashi, and a small child who stood against the door, who was Konohamaru, without a doubt. He dug his fingers into his pockets, trying to cope with the sounds. He noticed that there was another nurse down the hall who was leaning against the wall, her head in her hands. This obviously wasn't hard for just him to take.  
He got very close to them, nudging his way in between Kakashi and one of the nurses. "Hey." His voice sounded exhausted, even to his own ears.

"Hey." The scarecrow's voice was almost shaky, which was alarming. Naruto met his eyes. It had been like this for a while, then, and was probably even worse than it sounded. He noticed a small cut on the man's forehead and shivered slightly, nodding to it. "You've taken your shift already, I suppose?"

He nodded softly, silver hair shimmering in the light. "She's in quite the spot."

There was a smashing sound from inside the room followed by another piteous screech. Naruto's stomach clenched.

"I'm guessing she hasn't run out of things to throw, then. That's a surprise."

It would've been funny if he hadn't been dead serious. Kakashi nodded. "Yeah. We thought so too."

"Who's in there with her right now?"

"Shizune. She's good on her feet, from the sounds of it."

Naruto swallowed hard. "How easy is it going to be to get me in and her out as safely as possible?"

"I don't know. Yohko hasn't crowded us yet, but you never know."

The blonde nodded, tense. This wasn't going to be easy.

He remembered Konohamaru and met the boy's eyes, kneeling down. "Hey, kiddo."

The five-year-old nearly bowled him over the way we jumped on him. Naruto managed to keep his balance and held him close. He knew that if it was hard on him, it had to be hard on Konohamaru, who had not only lost his brother today but had to watch his mother suffer for it, unable to do anything for her.

"You've been really strong, today, Konohamaru," he said gently, into the boy's hair. "Thankyou."

"Can you make her better, Naru-niisan?" Konohamaru's voice was hiccup-y, evidence to the tears he was fighting so bravely to hold back.

"I can try my hardest. You've just got to keep hanging in there, okay?" He pulled away slightly, looking into the boy's face. "Can you keep doing that for me?"

Konohamaru nodded hard, jaw held tight. "Yeah."

Naruto looked to Kakashi, who he knew was watching him. "How do we let her know--"

The man reached over him to rap sharply on the door with his knuckles. Immediately, all movement on the other side stopped. Naruto rose slowly, preparing himself for the worst.

The door opened and closed again quickly and sharply as Shizune hurried out. She was short - shorter than Yohko even - with small breasts and hips, and dark eyes. Her dark hair was tousled, and she looked exhausted in her lab coat. She sported a bruise to her collarbone, instead of blood, like Kakashi, and her hands were shaking.

"Ah...Naruto-kun."

Naruto nodded his greetings. "You alright?"

Shizune sighed, brushing herself off haphazardly. "I suppose. She's in deep though." She looked him full in the face, obviously concerned. "Are you sure you want to--"

"I don't really see it as a choice," Naruto said simply. "I know I'm not completely safe from becoming like this either, but I'm probably the only one who can calm her down even a little, by this point."

Shizune looked upset but nodded. "Mind yourself, Naruto-kun."

"I promise I will."

Kakashi put a hand to his arm, and he looked over. "Be careful, Naruto. Tell us if you need out of there, whether you think it's in her best interests or not. Understand?"

"I'll be careful, Kakashi."

The man nodded, releasing him and Konohamaru stepped back so that he could walk forward.

Shizune put her hand to the handle. "Ready...?"

He nodded. She opened the door and he went in without hesitating, or waiting for his brain to catch up to him, letting it close. He felt Kakashi's eyes on him and set about completely ignoring the last part of what the man had just told him.

Nothing could've prepared him for what met his eyes.

Yohko was curled into a ball in the center of the room, sobbing into herself. All around her was the wreckage of what had to be a good fifteen tantrums elongated over the time she'd been trapped her. The bed had been flipped over, and now the frame was apart from the mattress, parts of which were missing so that its insides were strewn all across the tile. The blanket and sheets were around Yohko's shoulders, and dragged across the floor, some parts of them sopping wet. The pillows were no longer existent, feathers shaken out everywhere. Bits of the ceiling tile were dented from objects having impacted them. Most of the medical equipment had either been ripped apart of thrown into the walls; fragments of glass littered the corners of the room. The last thing to have been tossed seemed to have been a vase of plastic flowers, the pieces of which crunched under his shoes as he entered. The contents, a few ugly looking sunflowers were snapped in half. He could see a swipe of blood across one side of the room.

He shifted uneasily, watching her. "Yohko...?"

"Go away." Her voice was muffled by the sheets and her knees.

He sighed. "Yohko..."

"Go away! I don't want to talk to you."

"I know you don't. You don't want to talk to anybody."

"Go away, then. Leave me alone."

"You don't want that."

"Yes I do."

"No you don't. You remember what being alone is like."

Yohko was quiet for a minute.

"Listen to me."

"All I've been doing all day is listening to people."

Naruto came forward, dropping down to try and look into her face. She clenched the hands holding the sheets over her back tighter, refusing to lift her head at all. He sighed.

"I know that."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do."

He did. Yohko always submitted to other people's wills just because of how much she hated confrontation. But that made some believe that she was easily won-over, or that she did not maintain her own self. The latter part of that statement was more or less true, but she hardly let other people define her. She was closed off and small and deep and dark, and she let no one interfere with that. She was suspecting and nervous about almost everything and she had a right to be. As one of the few people she trusted completely, perhaps the only one still _alive_, he knew that all she did all day everyday was listen to people.

They were both silent for a minute before Yohko began talking again.

"They took him from me, Naruto."

Naruto finally reached forward to touch her arm softly. "Who?"

"I don't know!" She yelled, startling him slightly. He watched her carefully as she choked out the rest of it. "...I don't know... Someone... Something took him from me... And I can't go to anyone... I can't find anyone who does know, and no one can help."

"Yohko..."

"I can't even get the police to help me! I can't even... I can't do anything...I can't do anything, because no matter what, they'll take him from me. Either the government will or...or..."

Naruto reached forward again, concerned with how frantic and sporadic her thinking patterns were, but jumped again when she started yelling.

"The government...the fucking **government**! When have they ever done anything? They never tried to save us...they never tried even once... And now they want to take away my children? They can't do that! They...they...!"

"Yohko...!"

He grabbed her without really thinking about it, pulling her close to him even though she thrashed about wildly. He locked his arms around her even though she was still screaming and pounded against his chest, clawing at his arms. He kept her close to him against her will, because he just didn't know what else he could do. He needed her to speak more clearly.

"No! No...!"

"Yohko stop screaming!"

"No! They'll take them from me!"

"Yohko, listen to me! They're not taking them from you! I won't let them, do you understand? No one's going to take your children away from you as long as I have anything to say about it! Look at me Yohko - look at me!" He shook her lightly by her waist. "We'll get him back Yohko! You've got to believe me when I say that. Yohko, look at me. Right now."

She finally lifted her head to gaze up at him. Her eyes were swollen with the twin streams of tears that ran down her cheeks, which were sticky with moisture. They shone in a way that was so tragic it could've inspired a similar reaction in him. But as the strength of the situation, he knew just how much he couldn't afford that. He was way too compassionate a person, dammit.

He loosed his hands a little, confident that she was no longer so desperate to get away from him, and reached up to wipe her right eye clean with his thumb. She hiccupped softly. He sighed and leaned their heads together; keeping is voice soft so as not to work her up again.

"Good. That wasn't so hard, now was it?"

Her arms encircled him and she buried her face in his chest. He let her do what she needed and rested his chin on her head, breathing in the scent of her long hair. Her skin was unreasonably cool, he thought, as if she had expended so much energy in the past few hours that it had stifled her ability to produce body heat.

"Naruto...if I ever lost those children, I'd _die_."

He kissed her forehead. She continued onward, voice small and raw from crying and yelling so much.  
"I know I didn't give birth to them...but...but they're just as much my children as if I had...they really are...I just...I'd just die Naruto...I'd die...I swear I would..."

"I know that."

"I...I'm just so scared..."

"I promise we'll find him, Yohko."

She nodded and went quiet again.

Naruto held her for a very long time, becoming less and less aware of when the tears stopped and started. Yohko kept them quiet, out of consideration for him, he thought. They didn't think much of anything. They just stayed together, never shifting positions and never faltering. After what seemed a very long time, Naruto noticed that Yohko had fallen asleep against him, which he didn't particularly mind even if his legs were going to sleep from his having sat on them for so long. She was exhausted and it showed.  
Not long after that, a knock resounded on the door. Naruto glanced up at the knob, not knowing exactly what to do. He didn't want to move his cousin for fear of disturbing her. She was very much asleep, of course, but he knew what a light sleeper she had a tendency to be. Her deep sleep was much more easily to intrude on than with other people.

"Come in."

It was all he could really think to say, after all.

Kakashi poked his much frazzled head inside, eye blinking.

"Well, now..."

Naruto laughed softly. "Wore herself out, I guess."

Kakashi shrugged, walking in. "It doesn't surprise me. What with you to comfort her and all those hours of hard searching paired with the number she did on this place..." He trailed off, the impact of his words enough to substitute as an end to the sentence, and looked around the room, as if analyzing the damages.

Shizune followed him in, closely, looking curious beneath her all-business front. "I'm just glad she didn't hurt herself."

Naruto nodded, finally exhale his relief, small as it was. "Yeah, same here."

Shizune nodded slowly. "Naruto-kun...will you stay the night?"

Naruto pondered over it for a second, watching Yohko's sleeping face. He had no desire to abandon her. To do that would be traitorous if anything - she was depending on him right now. But, weighing the options, the dependence of the school on him was greater at this time. He'd already had one unexpected sick day in the past week. To have another one was to potentially overstretch the bounds of his overseer's hospitality. Tsunade and Shizune already required that the Dean give him more off days than the normal instructor in regard to his condition, but few of them were ones he could use of his own accord. The majority of the time, he needed that time for appointments and the like, and to push that point could have very serious repercussions.

He finally shook his head. "I'd like to keep her with me if I could...but I really have to go to school tomorrow."

Shizune sighed and nodded. "I suppose it's for the best...She'd be best off with you, after all. I'm not sure I'll want to leave her unattended, though, especially with Konohamaru--"

"I'll be fine." Said boy seemed to have entered behind the two adults and now stood beside the door. "We can go home with Naru-niisan, and when he goes to work in the morning we can wait until he comes back. I'm grown up enough." His arms were folded and he wore a very stubborn expression.

Shizune patted him lightly on the head. "I know you think that, Konohamaru-kun, but as your mama's doctor..."

Kakashi interrupted from where he stood over Naruto. "I'll go with them Shizune. Unlike Naruto, I can miss school tomorrow. I haven't used any of my sick days yet, and I was planning to anyway, so that I might keep looking for Inari."

"You've already phoned in a sub then...?"

Kakashi nodded. "Kurenai offered to do it for me."

"Generous of her." Shizune smiled. "Well...I suppose I can't object on grounds of doctor/patient obligation."

The scarecrow shrugged. "It's easier to keep Uzumaki's together than otherwise."

The doctor nodded and turned to Naruto. "If she wakes again, she'll likely need her sedatives." She reached into her pocket and handed her a bottle. "It's prescription and it's all the same dosage so tell her to do exactly what she does at home every night. If she's somehow unable, it's two and a good amount of water. Don't let her take them dry; it irritates her throat. Don't give her any of yours, either. Yours are a different type of medicine, and a lower dosage."

Naruto nodded, taking them and shoving them into a pocket. "Got it. Two with water of hers, not mine."  
Shizune nodded as well. "Very good." She turned to Kakashi. "Will you be--"

"Taking them home," he said, "yes."

"Alright...I won't arrange for any transportation then. Naruto-kun, will you need any help getting her out to the car?"

Naruto shook his head. "I'm good."

"Alright. Be careful...all of you."

Naruto nodded, and the woman turned to leave. She gave Konohamaru one last pat on the head, gestured to her nurses and walked away down the hall. Kakashi watched her go before turning to his friend.

"Can you really carry her?"

"Yeah...I think."

Kakashi helped him up, and it took him a while to fully adjust as the blood rushed to his legs, long denied. It was a painful experience, but not in a way that made him loud. The pinpricks that ran up and down only lasted a few minutes after all and he didn't want to jostled the person in his arms and wake her up. They walked slowly out of the hospital and down into the parking lot, him holding Yohko, Kakashi to his right, Konohamaru to his left.

"Oh, hey...I rode here on--"

"Nara's motorcycle. I know."

"Well, technically it's Ino's right now."

"I called _Nara_. He said he'd come and get it tomorrow if you gave him the keys and helmet at school."

"Man, I gotta haul those things to school? That sucks."

Kakashi sighed, half chuckling. "Just get in the car, you moron."

Naruto managed to maneuver Yohko into the furthest window seat in the back, and sat himself opposite. He saw her fingers move as her eyelashes fluttered, and she blinked up at him, face illuminated by the street lamp above the car.

"Where are we...?" She clutched at his arm, child-like and almost fearful.

"Shh," Naruto said, hugging her gently before setting her down. "We're going to my place."

She nodded quietly, and looked over his shoulder at the open car door. He turned to look, too, facing the cold air and bright lights of the night outside. Konohamaru watched them, looking passive. Naruto backed out and let the kid up on the seat, where he scrambled into his mother's arms. The two of them said nothing as Naruto shut the door behind them and climbed into the passenger seat, buckling the seatbelt across his chest.

He watched them both for a while, as they pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street. There was no argument that they made quite the pair; but they looked so forlorn and lonesome without their pillar third that it stung him. There was really no doubt in his mind. They had to find Inari before this got any further out of hand.

Naruto blinked and sat up.

Something was wrong.

He couldn't place it.

But something was wrong.

He yawned routinely, and disregarded it. Looking around he could sense it was morning. He wasn't really awake, per se, but he knew what was what. Kind of. He glanced around. He was lying on the couch, his blanket having been flipped off of him during the night. Oh. That must've been it. He was cold then.

Whatever. He could handle a little cold.

He further examined his situation. If it was morning than it was time for work. Sure. Work. School. Whatever. He could do that. He picked himself up off of the couch, scratching his chest. Ah, his clothes were still on. Must not have changed. Didn't matter. Nobody was going to care. He reached down to get his coat off of the ground and stumbled slightly, just barely falling.

He was strangely dizzy, but not in a way that really bothered him. He threw the coat around his shoulders and walked into the kitchen in his socks. He reached into the freezer and dug a piece of frozen French toast out of the open box, popping it into his mouth and biting down. Cold didn't matter. He was totally good with cold.

He peered into his bedroom and spotted both Yohko and Konohamaru with ease. They were both still asleep. He swallowed the rest of his French toast. That was good. He checked the floor in the living room, ironically, the place he had slept. There was Kakashi, asleep on the floor. That was good too. He could go to work then. No need to wake anybody up or anything.

The nausea wouldn't go away, but it didn't bother him. He grabbed his untouched briefcase from the kitchen counter, went to entryway and got his shoes on. He smacked his pocket. Keys: check. Oh, wait. He had to bring that crap for Shikamaru today. Maa. He didn't feel like it. Tomorrow.

It didn't register for a while that tomorrow was a Saturday. When it did, he was already halfway down the stairs.

'Too late now...' There was no way he was going back up again. The door shut loud. Had that always been true?

Out the gate and down the street three blocks. Up the stairs, through the double doors, down the hall, turn past the bathrooms, turn left at the end of that hall and keep going till you hit another set of double doors. Through those, through the courtyard, through another pair of doors directly across from them, take a right, take a left and walk until you almost hit a dead-end. He knew it like the back of his hand.

He reached into his back pocket and took out his key ring, yawning again, very widely. The whole world seemed...thicker today. Harder to move through. Just all around...heavy. Or something. He didn't linger on it, and unlocked his room, going in as soon as he heard the telltale click.

His eyes were met with emptiness. Oh yeah...he didn't have hall duty today. That meant he could be early two times in one week. He smiled groggily. Cool. He was gunna prove Sakura-chan wrong, then. That was awesome. He itched his chest again, his coat feeling unreasonably warm. He shrugged it off, not really minding as it dropped to the ground at his feet.

Something was off. But he didn't really mind it. He reached forward and fingered the smooth corner of a desk. It was...magnetic almost, the lonely frictionless-ness of it. Yeah...magnetic.

He was really, really sleepy...

* * *

"...sei..." 

"...sensei..."

"Naruto-sensei...?"

"Naruto!"

Somebody had just flicked him in the cheek, he knew that much. He groaned loudly, rolling slightly to swat at it. Man. What the hell was he laying on...? Something really hard...not to mention cold. Jesus, whatever it was, he was going to be in quite a lot of pain if he ever got around to sitting up. But he didn't want too...he was really tired. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed whatever it was that wanted him up would leave him alone.

"Naruto, wake up!"

He groaned again. "Five more minutes..."

"Naruto, do have any idea where you are? You have to get up!"

"I'unwanna...!" he whined, his speech thoroughly slurred due to the fact that he was still half asleep.

The same person, who had flicked him before, a girl his brain was starting to recognize as Sakura, smacked his belly. "Naruto, _get up_!"

"Ow!" Naruto's voice was still very whiney as he opened his eyes, squinting in the bright light that shone down on him. He rubbed his stomach, still wearing a grimace as his vision perfected itself, resuming to its normal 20/20. "That huuuurt!"

"You don't have any idea where you are, do you?"

"Sensei, are you alright?"

There were many faces hovering in his line of vision. Sakura's was foremost, chastising and mildly concerned. Surrounding her were none other than his students: Akamaru with a very furry coat over her uniform; shy Hyuuga Hinata who was fiddling with her skirt; Chouji, who was chewing on something and blinking; Kiba who was wearing the same coat as Akamaru.

His stomach jumped and so did he, eye twitching slightly.

"HOLY--!"

He would've shouted something foul to go along with it if he hadn't managed to tip himself off of the desk he'd been sleeping on and into another. He smacked the backside of his head against the table adjacent to the one he'd been lying on, and landed hard on the floor.

"Oh, Christ!"

"Sensei!"

The class hurried to surround him as Sakura pushed her way into the circle again.

"My God, what's up with you?"

Naruto rubbed the back of his skull. "Not a lot up. I seem to have a sincere problem with down, though."  
Sakura put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. Naruto rubbed his head harder, trying to outdo the pain.

"Jesus...how long was I out?"

"How would I know? You've been here ever since any of your students came in."

"And you didn't wake me up?"

"We tried!"

Akamaru nodded. "It's true, sensei. You wouldn't wake up until Sakura-sempai started smacking you around."

Sakura glared at her. "No offense, or anything," the Inuzuka girl added hastily, seeming afraid of the older girl's wrath.

"Crap..." Naruto kept rubbing, upset. "That's really weird..."

And then it dawned on him.

"Aw, _fuck_..."

"Naruto!" Sakura smacked him, more out of habit than of lack of consideration for his wounds.

"Ow!" Naruto winced and rubbed at the spot some more. "Don't do that!"

"Don't swear!"

"_Fine_!" Naruto got up and parted his students as he went to remove his jacket from where it was on the chair. Someone must've picked it up, he reasoned. That was nice of them. He rifled through the pockets and found what he was looking for, before letting out a sound of frustration, making sure to keep the language to himself, just incase Sakura was still unable to control her disciplinary ways.

"Wh-what is it, s-sensei...?" Hinata volunteered from back in the crowd.

"It's nothing... Just looks like I took my cousin's meds, by accident."

"Yohko's?"

He blinked back at Sakura, having temporarily forgotten that she had known him long enough to identify his cousin by name. "Yeah. She's staying at my house for a while." Never the complete truth, of course, but never a real lie.

Sakura nodded, looking sympathetic. "Yeah, I heard. Ino called me yesterday."

Naruto chuckled. "That girl certainly gets around."

"I suppose... Are you all alright?"

"We didn't find him, if that's what you're talking about."

Sakura nodded grimly. Naruto reached popped his back, yawning. No wonder...Yohko's dosage was stronger. Ugh. He felt like he'd just recovered from being stoned to death. Fatigue paired with lingering stress, he figured. That and the medication didn't wear off half as easily as he was used to. God. He was never doing that ever again. It was like being stoned. Hadn't he noticed that it was dark outside when he was walking to work...?

That and his shirt was completely unbuttoned. Praise the heavens for wife beaters. It would've killed him to be wearing nothing underneath. All in all, of course, his wardrobe was rather dysfunctional. It was sporting wrinkles every which way, and against the force of gravity, and he was sure his hair looked worse. Not that it really mattered. It was his own tiredness that bothered him the most. He sighed, brushing his pants off and starting to button up his shirt.

"Morning, guys." He waved offhandedly, not looking up from his task while doing so.

"Good morning sensei!"

"You're off by one," Sakura said, pointing to the line of buttons. Naruto cursed and undid them so he could start over. The cherry-blossom shook her head. "You're doing it again." He undid them all and began to start over. She let out a deep sigh and came forward. "Moron! You keep doing it exactly the same." She reached forward and started from the bottom, heading up, quicker than anything.

"Nice...! You're good at that." Naruto watched her, slightly amazed, and very glad. He could see Sasuke staring at him from out of the corner of his eye, and it made him very, very self-conscious, which, in itself, was uncomfortable. Sakura, unaware of it, rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, didn't I tell you? I practice cross-dressing in my spare time."

"_Really_?" Naruto stared at her.

"No!" Sakura smacked him in the stomach again, having finished with the buttons. "You're just dumb!"

"Oh, well, if that's all..."

Sakura rolled her eyes again. "If you're up, I'm going back to class."

Naruto shrugged. "Fine. Be careful."

"Yeah, thanks for the memories, you hobo."

"That's mildly offensive."

Sakura's bark of laughter caught him on the cheek and she disappeared out the door.

Naruto glanced up, and perused the room. "Was I really that sound asleep...?"

Akamaru nodded, having taken her seat. "Yup. Sure were."

Naruto rubbed at his head. It was developing into a habit, he noticed. Great, something to further add to what was sure to be his going bald. Just what he needed. He might as well just get ahead of himself and shave it all off... "That's crazy." He turned to his favorite Akimichi and shouted.

"CHOUJI!"

Said boy jumped to attention. "Y-yes?"

"You may be happy to learn that you aren't failing."

Chouji blinked. "Is...that all, sir?"

"Yup."

He sighed, seeming relieved.

Naruto turned to the rest of the class.

"Anything else I can do to make your guys' day better?"

"ICE CREAM!" Kiba yelled from the back of the class. The rest of the class clamored in approval.

"Ice cream?" Naruto blinked. "Seriously?"

"Yeah!"

"Oh...well...I'm broke, so no cigar as far as that goes..." He shrugged off the various forms of sighs and groans that echoed around the room. "You guys wouldn't want it this early in the morning either. S'bad for your teeth."

"Teeth shmeeth! I want ice cream!"

"I'm _broke_! No ice cream. No anything that's going to cost me any money."

"Couldn't we make some sort of human sacrifice, asking the gods for ice cream that rained from the sky?" Akamaru said, from her place in the front.

"For one, no, it's illegal, and for another, no, you don't need ice cream that badly." Naruto went to his lectern and began taking roll. He knew without really looking down whose name was where, and who was in attendance of his class. Almost everybody was there, he thought, and giving the room a once over, he discovered that this was, indeed the case. Everyone was there...everyone except Haku, whose seat was empty.

He blinked, shrugged and marked the 'absent' box with his pen.

"Sensei?"

"Haku's absent. I hadn't noticed."

Akamaru blinked, trying to stifle what was definitely a look of disappointment. "Aa, so he is..."

"Other than that though everyone is here, yes?"

"Far as we know, sensei," Akamaru said nodding. The rest of the class murmured in agreement.

"That's good..."

"What are we doing today, sensei…?"

Naruto grinned. "Well, you've started reading _The Crucible_ in your English classes, haven't you?"

There was a collective nodding.

"Well, I figured I'd take about a day or two to orient us all with the atmosphere of Salem, and the McCarthy era. It'll help you guys better grasp whatever your teachers are getting you to read."

The class blinked.

"What does the McKipper era have to do with Shalom?" Kiba called from the back.

"I don't think there was a McKipper era, Inuzuka-kun," Naruto said, tweaking an eyebrow at him. "The word is McCarthy. And Shalom is Jewish, Mr. Global-Awareness; Salem is where the infamous witch trials you'll be reading about took place." If he could've insulted Kiba more, he would have. But that wasn't as legal as he would've liked – he'd stick to poking fun.

The dog-boy frowned back at his teacher and snorted. "What's the dif?"

"There's a lotta' '_dif_'. There's just about as much '_dif_' as there is between today and the sixteen-hundreds, although your oh-so-creative-vocabulary doesn't seem to reflect as much."

Kiba's face flamed. His sister laughed openly and he snapped at her. Naruto promptly beamed him (long-range; he was mildly proud of himself) with a spare book he snatched up off of the shelf of his whiteboard, and then, ignoring Akamaru's giggling and Kiba's griping for the time being, turned to address the rest of the class.

"Okay, so, I'm guessing none of you know who-"

There was a rapping sound from just outside the door. Naruto blinked. Knocking echoed from behind the metal once again. Grinning, he turned from his lectern and trotted over to open it. It could only be one person. There was only one person who ever knocked on his door.

He through it out and leaned on the doorframe. "Neji! Long time no see."

Said sophomore looked less than amused. "If you really missed me so much you could've gone out of your way to corner me somewhere and talk me to death. You don't seem to have any trouble doing it with anyone else."

"Oh, Hyuuga, for shame!"

"Look who's talking…"

Naruto chuckled and folded his arms. "What do you want?"

The Hyuuga's crystal-colored eye twitched ever so slightly.

'_Ah. So it **is** something I'll regret asking about. Jolly good.'  
_

"I need Shikamaru's gear back."

Naruto paled.

'_Crap.'  
_

"Uhhhhhhh…"

"If you don't have it for me sensei, I swear to God I'll rip your eyeballs out."

'_Crapshitfuckshit.'  
_

"But I liiiike my eyeballs…" Maybe pleading would work?

The Hyuuga twitched again.

Okay, so pleading wasn't going to work unless he tried harder.

"Hey! I've got an excuse!"

"I. Don't. Care." Twitch. "I. _Need_. Shikamaru's. Gear. Back." Twitchy-twitchy-twitch-twitch.

"I. Don't. Have it," Naruto said, bearing down on him. "**Deal**." Naruto did not like being pressured for things that weren't exactly his fault. It was sort of his fault, since he was the one to have taken the stuff in the first place, but since it wasn't his fault Inari had gone missing, he wasn't really to blame for that either. And the drugs were an accident – so he wasn't exactly his fault, and therein lay the problem. Shikamaru was just going to have to deal with that until he got the stuff back to him.

"How am I supposed to deal?" Neji snapped. "Shikamaru isn't going to let me back into the classroom without it."

Naruto stared. Oh. So that was the reason _Neji_ had come over and not the Lazy Bum himself. That made sense.

Then again, he didn't _really_ care.

"So?"

Neji grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him down so that they stared eye to eye. His voice was terse and quiet, an indication that the Hyuuga was rather angry by this point. "_Do you have any idea how hard it is to maintain an A-minus average in Akuma's class_?"

Naruto blinked, slightly taken aback. "Um…hard?"

"If I miss even one class period, he'll drop my grade to a B. A B-plus, but B nonetheless. Do you have any idea what that _means_?"

"Uh…the family I stopped from murdering you last year will finally be justified in doing so…?"

Neji graced him with a _very _acidic look. Ah. Score negative three-thousand for landing it in one. Naruto swallowed.

"Uh…if I were too, uh, oh, I dunno, find something that looks remotely like a helmet and keys, would that help any?"

"Have you no brain, Naruto?"

"Well, you know, people wonder sometimes, but-"

"If you do not find _something_ to appease me _very_ quickly I will remove your limbs and pickle them in a jar."

"Hey, now-"

BANG.

Naruto froze. Not just stilled, as Neji did, but froze. His back went rigid and a tremor whizzed up his spine, draining his face of cover. A squeal of fright from Akamaru was smothered fast and the chaotic buzz that followed as students turned to one another and began to talk brought him out of his stupor. He looked down the hall.

"What the hell was that?"

Neji followed his gaze. "Gunshot. Definitely. Handheld semi-automatic from the sound of it."

Naruto turned to him and moved forward from the doorway. "Yeah, I guessed as much; where, you think…?"

It was a very tall man with a bandana and frightening build walked by them, footsteps heavy. His skin was a deep tan, and two scars ran down the expanse of his face, making him seem foreboding, and his voice backing up the assumption with it's depth and gravelly-quality.

"Bathroom. For certain."

"Ibiki…" Naruto darted out of his classroom, hardly noticing the clatter behind him as he made to do so. "What's going on?"

"I don't know, but we're going to check it out."

Naruto nodded haphazardly, and turned to Neji, about to say something when the boy cut him off.  
"I'm coming, as well."

Ibiki nodded from where he was halfway down the hall, and Naruto let out a frustrated sound of a strangled nature. Behind him, his door – which had almost shut completely – opened sharply, revealing Akamaru, who seemed to want to know where he was headed.

"Sensei—"

"Stay inside the classroom, Akamaru. Don't let anyone leave while I'm gone."

"Sensei…!"

He scampered to catch up with Ibiki and Neji, not acknowledging her.

When he finally caught up, the chill he'd felt earlier was coiling in his stomach. He felt jumpy and out of breath. "What are we looking for, exactly?"

Ibiki shook his head. "Something. Anything. If anyone's got a gun in here, we need to know who it is and where they've got it – not to mention why it was just fired—"

He cut himself off as they came around the corner of the hall where the bathrooms were located, and they all stopped dead in their tracks. They just stopped and stared. Neji was as close to gaping as Hyuuga's got, mouth hanging a slight bit open, and Ibiki's eyes were wide. Naruto could've had a seizure and not noticed, so taken was he by the scene displayed in front of him.

A girl lay in the middle of the aisle, face down in a pool of her own blood. Her hair was short and strewn all about her head, where the offending bullet hole lay – it was dyed platinum blonde, a fact that was exposed by her dark roots. She wore the standard uniform that all students wore, all of it spotless. Her own eyes were just within view; open, white, and pupil-less. They seemed to have rolled into the back of her head post-mortem.

They all just stared for a very long time. Neji was the first to speak, his voice hoarse out of shock.

"Sh…Shirono Usagi…she was in my third period…"

Naruto had no idea what he was saying as he said it.

"Neji, go back to my classroom and hold down '1' on the telephone. It'll connect you directly the Dean – tell him to lock down the school. Tell the students that, on my instruction, you are all to lock the doors, curtain the windows, turn off the lights, get under the desks and be quiet until you are told otherwise by the Dean himself."

Neji looked to him. "I-"

"Go **now** Neji!"

The Hyuuga whipped around and took off.

Naruto turned to Ibiki, panicking. His fellow teacher seemed to know exactly what he was thinking.

"You need a classroom to stay in, Uzumaki."

"Not the issue right now – we have a dead student and somebody with a gun on campus."

"Somebody with a gun who is most likely after _you_."

"I'm only one person, Ibiki. We need to take on the responsibility of protecting give or take seven hundred people."

Ibiki watched him, stoic and tight-lipped.

"You'll opt for spreading the word then…? That figures."

Naruto clenched his fists and nodded down the hall. "Iruka."

"I'll go to Azuma, then."

"Right."

"Be careful, Uzumaki."

Naruto nodded and didn't really listen to him, charging away from the body and down the hall, throwing himself into Iruka's classroom.

Said dolphin blinked and turned to look at him. "Naruto…?"

"Iruka, we've got trouble. A whole lot of it."

Suddenly, the PDA near the clock beeped very, very loudly.

There was a chorus of upset students up and down the rows. They were right to complain; the sound had, indeed been very shrill and piercing, in a way that made even Naruto's eardrums hurt. Iruka quieted them though, because of the eerie silence that fell out of the speaker. There was a crackling static that flowed out of it into the room as the students eventually hushed their chatter.

The Dean's voice floated out, after about twenty seconds.

"Teachers, the following is a lock-down."

Naruto stared at the voice, ice-cold. Everyone turned to look, perplexed. The man on the other side of the speakers, calm as anything, cleared his throat again, and continued to speak slowly and clearly, as if he were trying to be polite.

"I repeat: Teachers, this is a lock-down. Please proceed to turn off all noise-causing devices, and electronics. Windows are to be closed and shutters drawn and doors locked until further notice. All students in the halls, go to the nearest classroom immediately. This is not a drill. I repeat: This is not a drill."

They all stared at it for a few more moments.

And then, it all clicked, and Naruto could see Iruka's stomach plummeted and he sprung into action.  
He whirled around, making for the door with his keys. "Hojo, pull the drapes across the windows."  
Students jumped every which way like insects, making noises of panic. Iruka slammed his keys into the lock and turn, and Naruto almost smiled, hearing the satisfying click and feeling very glad that they didn't have any windows in the doors. He spun to the class, though, eyes hard. "Quiet! No talking! Everyone under the desks, now!"

They shut their mouths and jettisoned to safety, all clamoring over each other. Naruto flicked the lights off and checked everything over. A pair of girls were crying in the back, but he could see Sakura was consoling them as best she could. Good girl. He looked to Iruka, who looked both frightened and very grateful, but took him by the arm.

"Naruto, what's going on…?"

"Somebody was shot near the bathrooms."

Iruka gaped. Naruto bit down on his lip bottom and hustled to get his friend under his desk.

"I-I…"

"Hush."

His brain, which, out of panic, had begun to white itself out finally graced him with its presence.

'_This is fucking insane.'_

He hoped his class was alright.

* * *

**End Chapter 10**

Ugh...this scene is going to give me nightmares after I write it. Why do I make fanfictions like this? I hate gore. (Maybe that's why...? So I can write about characters that hate blood and violence just as much as I do...? I don't know...) At any rate, I know that my writing just gets more and more full of crap and hard to follow by the chapter, so I shall provide all readers with a summary so that we can be sure everyone got it alright, ne?

Okay, so in the last chapter, Uzumaki Naruto - who at the time was visiting with his student Inuzuka Akamaru, and her family - received a call from one Hatake Kakashi, who told him that his nephew, Inari was missing. This chapter begins with him thinking about it, hard, trying to figure out where Inari might've vanished to. In need of a vehicle to get uptown more quickly than his feet can manage, he goes to Yamanaka Hanahazukashii, a flower shop/fashion boutique managed by his former student Yamanaka Ino. After a brief discussion, she lends him what turns out to be Nara Shikamaru's motorcycle.

Using the motorcycle, Naruto thoroughly searches town to no avail. With nightfall, he arrives at the Kubome, where he knows Kakashi will have taken his fitful cousin, Yohko, who is also Inari's mother (in case you never pay attention). There, he walks in on his friend Momoichi Zabuza, and his student Haku, who are in the midst of making out. He questions Zabuza as to if he's seen Inari around - he hasn't. Naruto thanks him anyway and, out of the blue, gives him eighty dollars, which he hopes he will spend on contraceptives. (I didn't write it in, but we were all thinking it. "BUY BIRTH CONTROL, YOU RAT. SAFE SEX OR NO SEX." -cheers-)

He goes into the hospital and spends alot of time disarming his cousin and calming her down. After that, he talks with Shizune, both he and Yohko's physician. They all come to an agreement that Yohko may stay at Naruto's apartment with Konohamaru as desired, if Kakashi stays with her as he's said he will. Shizune gives Naruto Yohko's medicine for that night (sedatives) and they all drive home.

Naruto wakes at probably sometime about four o'clock the next morning, having accidentally taken Yohko's medication instead of his own, dresses, eats and goes to work, where he promptly falls asleep on a table. He wakes several hours later to realize what happened and button his shirt, because Sasuke's drooling and it makes him nervous.

After sending Sakura packing because his shirt is buttoned and she is no longer useful to him, Naruto and his class proceed to have a very interesting and meaningful conversation about ice cream while Naruto takes roll. He realizes that Haku is absent, before starting to begin the lesson. He is interrupted by Neji, who needs Shikamaru's stuff back – otherwise he won't be allowed back into the room. He and Naruto argue for sometime before a gunshot rings out from close by. Intrigued and somewhat disturbed (to say the least) the join a passing Ibiki in going to investigate – what they find is a girl named Shirono Usagi, lying face down in a pool of her own blood. Naruto panics and sends Neji back to phone in a lock-down to the Dean, before rushing off to tell Iruka.

He has just entered Iruka's room when the PDA makes a weird noise before announcing that a lock-down is in progress. They lock the doors, close and cover the windows, turn off the light and voices, and get under desks because that is what you do in a lockdown. (Hideki told me, so now I know.) The chapter ends with the class going haywire and Naruto's brain freaking.

Does that help? I hope so. Yeah... So, like I was saying:

UGH-NESS.

It's not that I hated the chapter so much as I hated it's flow. It was really hard to write, when it came right down to it. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it was so directionally challenged. Did you notice how many detail were in there just about _where the hell he was_? I don't know why I did that. Don't ever use this fanfic as a guide to San Francisco. I swear, I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.  
Or, maybe it's because we're getting into the darker elements and I don't feel like I've prepared for them enough. I definitely don't feel like making any more filler chapters though...those suck to write even more than ones like this do!

It took forever too. Not just to write, but I was almost done when my internet connection WHIGGED. I've spent WEEKS getting it back up.

But still! Double digits! -pumps hand and collapses- I'm the man...! Girl...! Demonic annoying cherub with fangs...! Whatever...

I WANT FAN ART.

I don't know why. But I do. Really bad.

Not that we have any scenes that work too well for that just yet...so I guess I'll wait a few chapters before actually starting the contest itself, but yes, I plan to commission you all to give me fanart. Why? **Because I really want fanart. **-sobs- You guys have no idea.

I really would like to thank everyone who's stuck with me so far...reviewers, flamers, BETAs. You guys are so dear to me, and I'd like you all to know how happy I am that this fic can go as far as I want it to.

-collapses- Even so, I think I'm going to die.

-- _Lady Lamb_


	12. Hurts You More

**Title: **None the Wiser

**Author: **_The Uke Reformation_

**Genre: **Naruto

**Subgenre:** Romance/Angst

**Summary:** There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...NaruSasuNaru, yaoi.

**Rated: R** for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

**Author's Note:** Okay. In all seriousness, I am really really really _really_ sorry. This took forever, and I think we both know it. But c'mon – that cliffhanger was impossible. And I have just officially – OFFICIALLLY – died of homework abuse. Have some sympathy. (This chapter's theme song is 'Waters of Nazareth' by Justice.)

**Note:** You're right – it IS a bad, ultra-confusing, superangsty!attempt at a homosexual romance novel. :D

**Disclaimer: Copyright _The Uke Reformation_, 2006. All rights reserved.**

* * *

None the Wiser

_By The Uke Reformation_

* * *

**Chapter 11**

**" Hurt you more**

**than it hurts me. **"

To say the atmosphere was charged would not have given it due justice. Of course, it _was_ charged – there is rarely a lockdown that has taken place that did not cause a bit of tension among a given student body. But charged was not enough of an adjective. It was taught and high-strung and it was as if strings of wire were biting into the soft skin of Naruto's stomach.

And to say that Naruto was worried didn't give the feeling due justice either. He wasn't worried – not close, even, not really. Naruto was beneath a desk with one of his oldest, dearest friends, wondering if around thirty-three children he was responsible for were alright, and listening to silence as hard as he was able.

Naruto was bordering on panic mode.

Naruto had an unearthly aversion to guns just because of all the things he'd experienced; it wasn't that he was frightened of them, that they made him shake, or that they made him so nervous he couldn't think. That was, of course, because Naruto understood that guns were only bits of machinery that were relatively useless unless the person behind them knew what they were doing.

But, in the face of someone who _did_, Naruto reverted into something he did not recognize as himself. He morphed into something frightened and frightening as such, more of a body than a person, and started thinking with his bones, rather than his mouth, like he usually did. In the face of someone who knew how to use a gun, Naruto was more chicken shit than anything else, and he knew it.

He clenched and unclenched his hands tightly, staring out at the door from under the desk, his skin a sickly sort of pale, and clammy. Every bit of his psyche was running around in circle, every piece of his brain screaming at him a different set of directions.

All of his self-preservation instincts were most prominent, and fighting desperately against every other fiber of him. He noticed, haphazardly, that their arguments were getting stronger. Death seemed more frightening than ever, as a prospect, and the gun-fear was also cause for alarm, and his brain ruled that against him. If he was sane at _all_, it reasoned, he would stay here, where it was safe. The kids would be fine. They were alright.

But every 'whatif' that ran through his blood told him otherwise. It was his job to protect them; it was his _duty_ if he was going to be all saintly about it. He was their collective guardian for one hour of the day and to not go back to them in their time of need was to let them down. It was to leave them high and dry at a time when it most certainly was not kind, nor safe to do so.

The cold wood of the desk he was pressed up under was uncomfortable to sit against and he craned his neck around it, looking out at Iruka's classroom and into the scared, worried eyes that looked back at him. Green, black, brown and blue surrounded by varied degrees of skin color, but all with the same expression, the same, communal feeling of being helpless in the face of dire circumstances.

There was pang in his gut, and Naruto recognized it as guilt. Only having sat still for a few seconds more than a minute, he felt guilty for leaving his own kids to face that alone. He was both vexed with his situation and angry at himself for not having thought about it earlier, but he was unsure of what to do about it. The door was locked and he couldn't just go back the way he had come. He didn't want to draw attention to his students. The whole idea of a lock down was that the populous of a school vanished in the eyes of an oncoming predator. To draw attention to them would be to blow _everyone's_ cover.

A hand on his, warm and calloused, made him jump, and he promptly banged his already aching head against the desk under which he was concealed, light exploding in the back of his eyes. He swore, and grabbed at the top of his head, where it hurt the most.

Iruka looked startled at his reaction. "Naruto, are you alright…?"

Naruto grunted, not quite able to reply. His friend blinked at him, concern showing through every corner of his scarred face.

"…fine," he said after a minute. Spots flew across his insides, and the pain against his skull felt swirled, dilated and dizzy. Everything was multi-color and tie-dye, and then monochrome, and then in and out and then back to normal. He scrubbed at his hair, hoping to distract the pain of the dealt blow via moving-in-a-distracted-fashion.

Iruka didn't look assured, but (well-versed as he was) did not make a habit of providing the same law more than once (except in extremely special occasions.)

"…are you…?" The dolphin peered at his face.

"Worried…? Yeah."

Iruka watched him.

"…did you lock them in?"

Naruto blinked and closed his eyes then, squeezing them closed and thinking hard. Of course he had. …well, _he_ hadn't. But he'd sent Neji back to—

He balked, feeling the weight of his keys pressed into the fabric of his back pocket.

_Oh shit_.

Iruka seemed to see the negative charge come off of him and stared.

"Naruto…"

Said Uzumaki strangled the notion to scream in frustration, and clocked the time it took him to breath out, holding in as long he could, trying to get his nerves to calm down. This was bad. Damn it. _Damn it._ This wasn't supposed to happen – how could he have forgotten something like that? How irresponsible could he—

_Calm down, calm down. They're fine, they're fine._

Iruka squeezed his hands.

"Iruka, I have to go."

His friend's voice tightened to a low, strained hiss. "You _can't_! You have to wait it out…"

Naruto dragged his hand out Iruka's grasp, though, self-assured, the feeling buckling down in his chest. He wasn't a person to sport false heroics; he couldn't leave them unattended like this. His door wasn't locked and they had no one to defend them; he trusted them, but this no longer counted as worry or concern. This counted as something vital.

He needed to go.

He clamored up and Iruka scrambled after him. The blonde was almost up before the brunet with which he was paired caught up with him, and took hold of his arm, holding him half-way down.

"Naruto, you _can't go out there_!"

"Iruka," Naruto hissed back at him, aware of the eyes on them and only halfway up, somewhere between being off balance and upright. "Let go!"

"Naruto, I'm serious. You can_not_ go out there."

"Iruka—" Naruto didn't have time to argue.

"What's going on?" Sakura's voice was terse, strung out as if over several feet. She had hurried down the aisle to stand before them, face twisted in a mix of anger and nervousness. Her hair (short and pink as always) came forward, skewed across her wide forehead (loosed from the band she kept the rest of it behind.) She looked frazzled, in a word.

"Haruno-san!" Iruka hissed, wildly. "Go sit with your classmates! We're in a—"

"I have to get _out of here_, Sakura. My class—"

"—lockdown! You have to follow procedures to a—"

"—is in a lot of trouble and I need to—"

"—tee! It's too dangerous!" Iruka spun on him.

"—go!"

"Stop talking, both of you!" Sakura shushed them with a quick and sharp-edged tone, coupled with a look that stung. (It was the rough equivalent to a dowse of cold water when one was sound asleep, Naruto figured. Speaking of which, he thought, rubbing at his scalp again, his head still hurt quite a bit. _Wonder how much sleep I got last night._) She turned to the blonde looking as if she expected a clearer explanation. (Behind her, her classmates were starting to look less worried and more distracted by the escalating clash of opinions in the front of the room.)

Naruto opened his mouth, fully intending to speak on his defense.

He was interrupting by the loud speaker which shrieked as it came on again, and then went silent. There was a second of air and then a muffled boom, as if the microphone had been dropped.

"Naruto-niisan!"

Naruto eyes bulged, his jaw went slack, and his stomach turned to ice.

_No._

"Naruto-niisan, help me! Where are you!"

_Oh God._

His heart had fallen out, he was sure of it. Fallen out, made of glass, and shattered on the floor, shattered into half a bazillion pieces he could not see. His brain spun in somersaults and writhed as it groped for them fruitlessly. His hands clenched, skin chilled.

"Help me!"

_This can't be happening._

Iruka's voice was trembling, as Naruto shook like he would seize at any moment.

"Inari-kun…!"

Naruto's brain was steeped in panic then, and he screamed.

"_INARI!_"

"Naruto-nii, the office–they—"

And then they heard the shot.

It was deafening, but short. A whipcrack, a well-aimed blast from what was probably a revolver. There was a collective scream from the student body and Naruto yelled his nephew's name, hearing Sakura slap hands over her mouth. ("No!!")

There were a few moments of deafening silence before Naruto made out Inari's distant panicked sobs and yells; he'd obviously been moved from the PA (probably been forcibly thrown from it, scared by the blast which, by the way it echoed and the way he could still hear the rough movements on the other side, had not hit anything – "No!" Inari screamed, "No! Naruto-nii! Help me!" Another person with a rough voice he could not make out said something and his nephews yells were suddenly muffled.) Naruto yelled his name again and again, as it it would do something.

"_INARI! **INARI!**_"

He went unacknowledged, and the PA continued to emit dampered sounds of a short scuffle before someone else came near it and cleared their throat. Naruto's own went dry, frightened by the fact that whoever it was came across as being completely at ease, their breath even and soft.

"Hello, Konohagakure Academy," they said lightly. "It is my duty to inform you that you have become the subject of a hostile takeover, courtesy of my partner and our associates. Please stay where you are and disregard anything and everything you think you have just heard."

_Wait a second._

"While I cannot inform you as to how long it is estimated this procedure will last—"

Naruto knew that voice.

"—I might warn all teachers that land lines have been severed and cell phone calls will be monitored—"

He couldn't place it, but it was right on the tip of his brain. (Why did it make his stomach churn…?)

"—and, knowledgeable as we are of your locations, it is advisable that they be turned off until it is announced we are taking our leave. Furthermore—"

He balked.

"—I would ask that everyone remain where they are—"

A voice that was unfathomably smooth, a girl's voice that fit a boy's throat, a ball gown for the Prince of the Rose, an alcoholic beverage that tasted only like fruit.

"—as my associates are rather unpredictable."

_No._

His own voice was sad and stuck against his tongue.

"Haku."

His brain and body went into lockdown, and he bolted for the door. (Iruka's belated yells only half caught up with him.) He threw it open and was down the hallway before anything stuck, before anything registered. (Before it registered that he was running full tilt down the hallway of a school filled with men and guns, and that one of his students apparently had his nephew in the office at gunpoint.)

_This shouldn't be happening._

* * *

The tile hallways were abandoned, as well they should be, and Naruto's brain was _swimming_. He slammed into a turn and dashed down the hall. Of course, there was the slight dilemma that he had yet to decide where he was going. 

_Fucking hell._

He couldn't help it; his psyche had been completely overturned in the matter of the few moments it had taken to register Haku's voice over the loudspeaker. The sweat was soaking him, his shirt and pants bunching and sliding against him violently as he moved, and it was a sheen that was greasy and cold, so cold it gave him a headache. (His head was throbbing, as if someone were beating it with a metal rod from the inside; his blood rushed inside his skin, and he was sickly in pallor, stark white and panicked and running as fast as he could in no general direction.)

This was hell; this was panic. This is what he'd escaped almost five years ago, this constant terror, this constant blindness. This constant, white-ended vision that inspired unnecessary rushing and rash actions and false honesty and all villainous things in men was what he'd tried to escape from. This panic was the panic of something hunted, of something that valued only its life. (In Naruto's case, the panic of something that wanted only to protect what it could, what it had promised to. He could not let them down. He could not let them get hurt.)

His footsteps were foolishly placed, but he was good at staying upright. (He always had been, even if he was easily bent into strange positions. He didn't like the feel of collapsing.) He was careful, having fallen back on that mindset because he knew too well what he was doing, knew how to minimize the sound of his footfalls (heel, toe, heel, toe, scrupulous and quick) until he was almost padded in the way he ran, so that even when he skidded around corners he made almost no sound.

_This is all happening too fast._

He knew he had to get somewhere, and _fast_. He should've taken something with him from Iruka's classroom, something with which he could defend himself, and he knew it, but he had no time to regret it, and so – instead – he decided that he would have to make up for it by finding one _now_, and _fast_. He was a fast runner, a good runner (he worked hard at it, too), but that wouldn't be half enough to help him if he got paired up with anything even half resembling an AK-47.

So, the plan was to find sanctuary. The plan was to find a place to hide, a place well stocked with something that was similar in nature to a blunt object, or a knife, or (if he was lucky) he could steal Asuma's handgun. (He knew where he kept it, under the false bottom of the second drawer of the cabinet in the backroom.)

But Naruto was not a very lucky person – he was _not_ counting on it. (He estimated that a piece of pipe would suffice…probably. Assuming he was actually insane enough to contemplate the continuance of these antics, armed only with a metal pipe and what limbs he could consider useful. Of course, it would be a different kind of insanity to consider leaving Inari to his own devices. Naruto was not the latter type of insane. He made a conscious decision not to think about the first part.)

Rows of dark green lockers zoomed past him in a blur (rather, he sped past them, feet moving soundlessly as he bid them to) and his world was a narrow spot, panoramic, absorbed with the sound of his own breathing, and his own fear. God he hoped Inari was alright. He spun around a corner.

_Inari…_

There was a surge, a sick, tight one that tasted terrible, and his stomach flopped and clenched. He was cold and his skin pulsed with contorted, panicked energy (adrenaline and testosterone to fuel his unending movements and harsh breathing.) There was an unending fear in him, and he was angry and confused and assaulted by fear and nostalgia all at the same time, in a way that made him want to vomit, in a way that made him want to speed up.

Instead, he skidded to a halt, trying to gather his bearings. (He'd taken the long way around the bathrooms, trying to get to his own classroom from Iruka's without going outside, which was, to him, the Twilight Zone at this moment, foreign and frightfully dangerous.) He was breathing hard and his hair was tousled and blown; his eyes seemed wild and his whole demeanor was of one that was very thoroughly spooked.

It was a miracle that he had yet to run into anyone.

Naruto was not a lucky person; he knew that that couldn't last.

He moved his fingers, trying to figure out where he was.

"Well, I've seen you look dumb before, _sensei_, but I don't think I've ever seen you look _crazy_."

Naruto's entire being jumped nine feet in the air and he whipped around, defense mechanisms fully employed, and _slammed_ his company's head into the lockers they stood besides, slammed it _hard,_ with as much force as he could gather in less than a second's time. His entire self pulsed almost gave way to animal instincts but—

Sasuke yelled as his hand whipped away and it stunned him. Not thinking, not understanding_, completely_ overwhelmed by the fact that his brain had just taken time to _register_ something, he grabbed him, whipped him into a turn so that he held the Uchiha's back to his chest and smacked his empty hand over the boy's mouth.

He was panicked and his head darted left and right, searching for more, searching for the metallic shine of a gun and it's Lady Bullet. The hallway was reigned with empty silence, though, Sasuke's noise smothered successfully (though he still made strangled versions of it behind Naruto's palm.) The blonde tensed at their positions then, and half-released half-shoved Sasuke out of his grip.

"_What are you **doing** here?_" The first words out of his mouth were hissed, cracked and acidic, completely sour. He could not believe this was happening.

Sasuke's expression was dull and bitter. He reached up with pale, slender fingers to touch at the side of his face. "…I'm bleeding." He brought them down to look them over with a derisive frown.

"No you are _not_!" Naruto spat, angry and high-strung.

"Yes, I am." Sasuke pinned him with a blank look and held up his hand which were smeared with a translucent red liquid that really could only be one thing.

"_Do you **really **think **that's** what you should be worried about right now?!_" Naruto's tone was fierce, chastising and belligerent. "_What are you **thinking**?!_" (He'd never wondered so much as then.)

He thought he heard something and his head swung quickly, again. Civic duty implored, he grabbed Sasuke's shoulders and shoved them both into the space between the rows of lockers made by the door of the counseling office. (The counseling office…? A light went off in his head – the back of it, anyway. Alright, then. He knew, relatively speaking, where he was…)

"What the hell do you think you're _doing_, Uchiha?!"

Sasuke stared up at him with all the indifference in the world.

"I've come to find _you_, sensei. I think that much would be obvious."

Naruto gaped at him before making several attempts to speak, all which failed because he had several response cued up in his brain before hand, and they came out all at once, and smashed into one another, like freight trains. (By himself, he felt as if he were smashing into something in a similar manner.)

Finally, he gathered himself up enough to speak coherently. "…You're an idiot, Uchiha. You should _not_ be out here."

"Neither should you." Sasuke made it sound as if that made them even.

"Do _not_ compare your actions to _mine_. _Why_ weren't you in class today?"

There was a sound down the hall and Naruto whipped around again. His ears strained to hear something – anything. He groped about for something to hang onto something definite, and his fear was stark, pressed deep into and against him. He was becoming his fear, and he was strung out; his fingers twitched again, and he whipped back around to stare at Sasuke with eyes that shone red for a second, caught in an odd spot against the lighting.

He grabbed his hand, feeling not dexterous but desperate, instead.

"Come with me."

Sasuke looked as if he might say something and so Naruto struck out preemptively.

"_Now, Uchiha!_"

And they ran. They sprinted down the hall, Sasuke not dragging him down at all, but actually keeping quite good pace with him, despite the fact that Naruto's legs were longer and that he'd obviously caught Sasuke off guard with his demand. (A first.) Demands were demands, though, and Naruto never failed to make them in earnest – he was driven by that same energy, doubled by the fact that one of the many he'd been charged to protect had appeared, unexpectedly in front of him at the most inopportune of moments. Naruto could hear the dynamic, hear the wind rushing against his ears and through his hair, could feel Sasuke's wrist in his hand (surprisingly warm – but he wasn't thinking about that now,) and there was the heat and pressure of fear that rose in the back of his mind; fear of falling, fear of dying, fear of noise and fear of-

Around the corner at the end of the hall and past yet another row of green lockers. (One was left hanging just a little bit open, the lock left unattended and papers half skewed past the insides, and Naruto was reminded of a small wound.) He was not tired, but he _was_ belleagured and scared and he didn't know how much he could afford to show and even how much of him Sasuke could see, being as he was, and just when the buzzing in his brain had become unbearable he found the door he knew would be open and in half a second's time had managed to swing them into the janitor's closet, closing the door behind him swiftly, silently.

He practically threw Sasuke's hand from his. The janitor had left the light on and he could see as he and the Uchiha breathed in harsh unison, and the way the shadows fell across his pale, pale skin made him unreasonably pretty and sickly-looking, like some sort of porcelain being. Of course, his blatant lack of fragility made up for anything so crazy as _that_ notion, Naruto thought, but by this point, his anger had flamed past his fear just enough for the edges of his psyche to be blackened with it.

His lungs wouldn't give him space to yell, and in the long run he knew that he didn't really have it to start with, but it felt as if he did. (As if he should.) All the same, he spoke, instead of whispered, and however quietly he did it, no matter how much his inherent outrage was butchered by his sad, cold lack of breath, he knew it was there, in his throat. He growled, lowly.

"Now," he said, "I'm going to ask you again, _what_, exactly, you're doing out here."

"Well then," Sasuke said, breathing almost returned to normal and skin not half so flushed as Naruto's was (the blood pounded in his head, his ears,) "I would suggest you pose that as a question rather than a statement." Naruto decided that he really must've been a football player, for his cardio to be so excellent. He was offended by the notion now even more than he had been originally.

If it hadn't been for his tenure, the sake of his job and his relative cleanliness of self, he would've admitted to feeling justified, slamming Sasuke's head into a locker. (It was too big for his shoulders. Too unevenly swollen. Naruto thought he might be justified in fixing that, potentially and hypothetically speaking.)

"Use your imagination," Naruto snarled, trying to ignore the fact that he doubted Sasuke had ever had one before, or knew what it was to be creative at all, "and answer it as if it _were one_, Uchiha." There were reason Naruto didn't like English, besides the fact that his was heavily accented.

Sasuke frowned at him and looked indignant, as if the fact that Naruto was not playing along was offensive to him in some way. That, in and of itself, was what made Naruto so angry, that ugly indignance, as if he was at some sort of _fault_, for being his superior in any way shape or form.

_Little bastard._

"Idiot. Don't be so angry." Sasuke scoffed at him – it felt like some sort of backhanded way to reprimand Naruto for being as he was.

Naruto was not angry.

Oh no, not at all.

No – Naruto was **not** angry.

Naruto was _furious_. And in being furious, Naruto did something he hadn't done in years.

He grabbed Sasuke by the collar (it was crisp and clean and nice – well-ironed, and Naruto could smell not-at-all-cheap cologne in the very fibres of it, washed out but still very much _there_, a lot like a few memories he could've pointed out to you in the museum halls of his brain,) and slammed him into the opposite wall, face twisted into a snarl. The inside of the closet rattled, the brooms and mops shook in their positions against the walls, and the boxes shuddered atop the shelves.

"If you think for even _one minute_, Uchiha, that _this_ is anger, you've got another thing coming." His breath was a hiss against both their skins and he could feel Sasuke's muscles moving beneath his hands, as if surprised, or at the very least resistant to being thrown around as such. They stared into one another.

"…I understand, sensei," he said finally. (Quietly. Rustling breath, like old leaves, yet unfallen.)

"What were you doing out there?"

"I told you. I was looking for you."

"_Why_?"

"I got to class late and your precious students wouldn't let me into the classroom."

Naruto was torn between relief and exasperation.

"…how are they keeping the door closed?"

"It's locked."

"Are you sure?"

Sasuke raised an eyebrow at him, as if he was crazy for even suggesting that the Uchiha would wander the halls without giving a reasonable course of action atleast a cursory trial. "Positive."

Naruto suddenly noticed the lack of distance between them - memory coursed through him, personal memory of hot beads of water all over his body and something he should never have done, should never have ever contemplated doing. Sasuke with feathers, Sasuke underwater, Sasuke on his back saying things Naruto could not believe. Some fantasies were better left unindulged – he felt stained, he felt putrid and that black bile slithered up his throat and made him let go and back away in a way he hoped (he prayed…? Naruto couldn't pray, he didn't believe in God,) would not be obvious, or give anything away.

"We should…" Naruto stopped himself shook his head. There was no 'we.' The closet was small enough that when he sat back on his heels, he sat back against the door, which was metal and heavy, and cool, and almost calming, but not quite, almost secure, but nothing ever was. (Naruto knew that better than anyone.) Who would lock his class in if he- He didn't know but he had to figure this out.

He could leave the boy here, but he had to go, and to leave Uchiha Sasuke unattended had obviously proven to be one of the worst tactics he had ever used in regards to _anything_. And this room didn't lock, so they were in danger simply by _being_ here in the first place, and that left Naruto distressed, and not to a small degree, but rather a very large one.

He tried to think while not looking stricken, think while, distractedly, continuing to ask Sasuke what were meant as rhetorical questions.

_This kid is trying to kill me._

"Sasuke, do you have any remote _idea_ how much danger we're in? Are you even _aware_?"

"There're people with guns roaming the school. So what?"

"_So you could **die**_."

Sasuke laughed at him then, smirking. "Oh? Would that really be a problem, sensei?" His expression was dark. Cynical. "I was under the impression that, if you were able, you'd rather like to off me _yourself_."

"You _don't_ understand, do you?!" Naruto spat, seething. (It didn't matter if Sasuke was right – it didn't matter at all. Naruto understood guns in a way Sasuke did not – _could_ not, was not at all even halfway capable of understanding. Naruto was haunted by Ghosts with their guns.) "Whose responsibility do you think it _is_ to take care of you around here?!"

"You're not my guardian," Sasuke said with a scowl.

"Oh, because that makes _a whole lot of difference_," Naruto said angrily, half-rolling his eyes. "Since I'm not your _guardian_, I must not be responsible for you _at all_."

"What are you saying?"

"Sasuke, for _six hours_ out of every week day, I am entirely responsible for you and approximately thirty-two other kids your age. If anything happens to you, the people the police get angry with is _not_ your _guardian_ – it's _me._"

Sasuke scoffed again. "You're worried I'll get you in trouble with the _police_?"

"I'm worried you'll _die on my watch_, Sasuke," Naruto said, grimacing. "_That's_ what I'm worried about."

_Don't you dare talk to me like you know everything._

The boy was scowling at him, and Naruto scowled right back at him because he knew – he _knew_ – what could happen and he knew that if that were to happen he would never be able to forgive himself. It would be the same with anyone. Sasuke was – God what _was_ Sasuke? – not always agreeable, and Naruto obviously harbored a much greater amount of distaste in respect for him that he harbored for any other student he could name but that didn't change things. (Sasuke being a student was what made everything so fucking complicated in the first place.) Naruto was protective, he always had been, and he wasn't going to let anything like that happen, not for any reason.

Fear was nothing. Fear for his own life wasn't going to stop him from protecting the things and the people he needed to. Naruto knew that half of his illness was him and _not_ the Ghosts (what they had done to him) and he knew that _that_ was the part of him that Tsunade was wrong about when she said he would never get any better than he was now.

("Naruto-kun, are you sure you're alright?" Shizune had looked at him very worriedly. "You seem troubled, and-")

Naruto knew that he was afraid, but he had applied for a teaching job knowing everything it offered – the good and the bad and the dangerous shit that would make the members of the school board smile tightly over their thinly rimmed glasses and give you that 'oh-well-that-never-happens' routine. (Naruto knew everything there was to know about the 'oh-well-that-never-happens' routine, because Kakashi and the whole of the Special Victims Unit of the Konoha Police Department knew what bullshit it all was. Naruto was one of those 'oh-well-it-never-really-happens'. Naruto could attest to what happened when the people who were supposed to be prepared froze up when one of those 'never-happens' _happened_, and he knew it so well that it stung the undersides of his skin.)

Sasuke brushed him off again, curt and easy, and Naruto recognized how many qualities Sasuke shared with an aloof, bad-mannered cat. "And who said you have a right to be worried about that? I'm fine."

And something slipped in Naruto's brain, falling out from underneath him like a chair, and he just barely restrained himself from yelling, from grabbing Sasuke and shaking him. (_I could hit you **so hard** right now._) The nervousness wasn't there so much as the anger was and he just wanted to smack him. (_I'll make you understand._) He pushed his teeth together in a fearsome snarl, and his frustration was both justified and intense.

"How is it that no matter what I say _you don't get it_, Sasuke?! How is it that I can try this hard to communicate this to you and you _still don't get it_?!"

"Maybe you're just wording it wrong," Sasuke said, still scowling.

"Then how 'bout I try to explaining to you that a girl just _little_ younger than you was just _shot and killed_ on school grounds?! _How can you not understand this, Sasuke_? That could've been you. _That could still be you_! This isn't- you're wandering around a school that is filled with people who have a potential to do you _serious harm_! _Don't you dare give me that look_!"

Sasuke's dark eyes were filled with a skepticism that made his rage flare, and for once things felt normal – he was just yelling at Sasuke, the same he always had, always did, always would, and there was nothing to worry about, the lockdown was maybe all his imagination, and he could afford to be as loud and as angry as he liked. He was paid to take care of him, _dammit_, and Sasuke damn well better _let him_.

"I can take care of myself." Naruto thought that maybe the boy was a victim of selective hearing. (Or selective mind reading abilities – maybe the only thing that permeated were the things he wanted to know? To be on the safe side, Naruto channeled a little more strength behind the 'I'm going to kill you if you don't listen to me' type thoughts, because he thought that if he was lucky it might do him some good.)

"I'm not going to let you _die_," and Naruto kept the 'you fucking ignorant bastard' of off the sentence's end, realizing belatedly that they were talking now, in full voices. (The fear jumped a little in his stomach, but he quashed it. _Focus on Sasuke, focus on-_ It wasn't hard of course. The little cuss was hard to ignore.)

"What make you think I'm going to _die_? Maybe I'll be _fine_." Sasuke's face was slowly twisting into an angry creature bourn of frustration, and Naruto was relatively sure that it mirrored his own. (He thought it had taken damn long enough, but he didn't like it, all the same, because he wanted Sasuke to just fucking _listen to him_ for once. He hadn't expected him to – Naruto was a hopeful person but he wasn't _naïve_ – but it was still _extremely _aggravating that the boy could not even seem to comprehend the possibility.)

"_What makes **you** think I would **lie** about something like this?!_" His voice was strangled, a bad attempt at masking his anger, and he didn't bother to restrain himself much further, because he knew the weight of the situation as it was. (He _really_ wanted to smack him.) He was almost afraid that if he restrained himself he wouldn't make any headway – but he hadn't made any headway in the past…God, how minutes had they been at this…? "You're in danger – and a big _shitload_ of it too – and the least you can do is listen to me!"

Sasuke snarled at him, lips gone terse, and his expression was twice as fierce in the faulty lighting. The way the lightbulb swung so ominously back and forth above them from the wind their movement created made Naruto think of a ticking clock inside a letterbomb, and it made him vaguely uncomfortable. The light that shone down was gray and strained. "I don't _need you_! I'll be fine on my own!"

"_You_ came looking for _me_! Don't make it sound like it was the other way around!"

"You _slammed me _into a row of lockers!"

"How can you be hung up on that?!"

"I'm _bleeding_, you _idiot_!"

"You snuck up on me! What kind of idiot isn't jumpy about something like that when-"

"Knock knock."

The voice that came through the door was sneering and vile and it made all of Naruto's inside turn to ice before dropping into some unknown oblivion, and the strings were suddenly back and stretched taut against every inch of his toned skin. The terror was back with all justified suddenness and he stared over his shoulder at the slab of thin metal that was now between him and something that sounded absolutely, positively evil.

There was a click of metal against thickness and whoever it was actually did proceed to knock on the door and each thunk was a six-foot piece of lead driven through Naruto's subconscious.

"C'mon out," a second voice said in a mocking tone. "We wanna talk to you."

Naruto cursed all Heaven and Hell and everything between and stomach acid and fear pressed tightly to the back of his eyes was all he could focus on. Sasuke was stock still and Naruto was driven – everything in his brain was scattered scribbles and a tornado of rubbish, a whirlwind of dark, screaming sirens and color, and he had no plan but drove forward and grabbed, remembering that the janitor's closet opened outward and had no lock to speak of.

(There was no way to keep them out.)

"_Move_!"

It was all he had time to say – whoever it was (both of them, maybe, he moved to fast to tell) and be the time they had, he had found what he was looking for, pushed Sasuke to the corner furthest from them and jabbed very strategically at the closest's jaw.

The desk connecter was of a cheap metal – the desks in the school were constructed so that they had a restraining bar on the side students were not to enter or exit from. They didn't really make seating more or less comfortable, but they were tin-looking and shiny, and most students liked them and used them as arm or head rests, depending on how their days had been and how late they'd stayed up the night before. Of course, the desks were not the most expensive, and whenever one came apart (much to their respective student's chagrin) it was usually the flimsy metal connecter that was to blame. They were not reattachable, having been welded to the wood of the desk and the plastic chair, and as such the ends were jaggedly edged, and the sound that emanated did not sound comfortable, as the first one stumbled backwards.

They were an odd looking pair, Naruto thought. They were gaunt and appeared to be siblings, both with dark beady eyes and shaggy brown mops of hair that looked like charcoal rubbed in snow. They both wore the same, mint-green surgeon's masks, camouflage uniforms, and long gloves – one on each hand – that looked cheap, like something Naruto would expect out of his oh-so-loveable class of underachievers in fourth period.

(All information that zoomed past his mind – he wondered in the back of his brain if he would ever see that class again, but it was not part of the present and so there was nothing associated with them that went on in the front of him, in the midst of his real exterior.)

The larger one, the one he had struck stumbled back with a surprised cry, and it was obvious that Naruto had caught him completely off his guard, and he followed it up, swing back and moving to strike him again, this time in the throat.

He wasn't lucky for the smaller one to be so dazed as his brother, though, having missed him, and he had to change his line of attack and bat at him as he lunged out with his gun – a semi-automatic pistol that Naruto guessed was what he'd heard earlier in Iruka's class (and he missed his friend, missed him dearly) – and the sound was a metallic cracking as Naruto knocked him back.

_Okay. No worries. You've just started a fight that has a lot of potential to turn fatal and you're fighting too guns with…a stick of light-weight metal that will, fundamentally, not serve to protect you at all if you want to say, deflect anything. Oh, and, by the way, you're not just defending yourself, but you ignorant blockhead of a student who has no weapon at all. _

Naruto was not feeling optimistic about his makeshift swordplay, and would've jumped back into defense mode if he'd thought for even a second that he could defend himself if he wanted to. If the best defense was a good offense, and all he _had_ to protect himself was offense, did that mean he was safer, or that his chances were in _any_ way heightened? Because if the answer was no, it wouldn't surprise him. (As it was, Naruto had gone into 'fight-like-a-caged-animal' mode, and he thought that that, in and of itself might give him some sort of upper hand.) But, if the other one got up, he was royally screwed. And if he turned his back to deal with him, the younger one was going to shoot him.

…_alright. Maybe a few worries._

He slammed the connector against the smaller one's wrist while he was off balance and elicited yet another surprised cry, but then his luck ran out, and the butt of another pistol was slammed roughly against the side of his head, and the force of it threw him to the floor, and he skidded along it, into the not-so-far opposite wall. He hit it cheek-first and yelled loudly.

_More than a few._

The smaller one rose and hurried in after his brother, and they encircled him, blocking out the overhead light with their bodies. Naruto's neck was sore from where he was trapped, on the floor and at a very awkward angle, both half up and more than half down.

"Nice one, Gozu," he said in a tone that was almost appreciative, but still condescending and sardonic.

"No trouble at all, Meizu," the elder replied, watching Naruto breathe with some sort of keen interest.

"That wasn't very nice, you know," Meizu said, then, crooning down at him through the mask. Naruto gritted his teeth and the glare his directed at them was fire and ice, even if it was hazed from the previous blow. (His head was rolling tumultuously, and he felt as if he'd been unceremoniously lurched from his own throat. His fingers ached – the connecter had been thrown from his grasp.) The words 'fuck you' wouldn't come out of his mouth, so he conveyed everything through his face, knowing he was good at it.

Meizu laughed. (His brother did not, but it was really all the same to the blonde, whose world had taken to swimming back and forth. He was too much himself to groan, but he felt like he should. The pain in the side of his head was hot and intense and it ached in a way that was hearty and very irritating. His focus drifted and then came back and it was all a very painful business and it made him want to hurl.) "You're snippy, aren't you? Wouldn't expect it from a teacher."

"Meizu," Gozu said sternly. "Don't fool around."

"What, yuh wanna finish him…? He is kind of annoying isn't he?"

Naruto growled, a deep guttural sound that bore such a remarkable resemblance to some sort of wounded wild beast that it made them both start a bit. But, at the same time they had managed to forget about Sasuke for the moment, so maybe if he could just keep them distracted a little longer, he could come up with a plan.

"_Damn_ snippy," Meizu whistled, sounding moderately impressed.

"That's nothing," Gozu said, bringing his gun up from his side. "I can teach you how to do that."

"Really?" Meizu, too, raised his gun (identical to his brother's) and grinned sadistically from behind his surgeon's mask. "It's wicked cool." The barrel was a cool silver and gleamed in the lighting and Naruto felt the desperate fear jump through his veins but he knew that if he moved now, they would definitely shoot him and he had no way to get away in time, or to avoid it.

He did not want to contemplate in depth that the last conversation he was ever going to hear was going to be about a _sound_ he had just made – didn't want to contemplate the fact that he was about to die, and eh thought that it was ironic that _this_ should be the end, because he had so many things left to defend, and he couldn't let it happen like this, not after he had survived the Ghosts. It was too cruel, it was too ironic, and his brain didn't even have the energy to send his life speeding past him in the buzzing of his ears, because he had seen it too many times having just _lived it_, and he didn't want to think about it, the grim realization that this was going to be his last breath, and he just really hoped…something. He really hoped that this wasn't about to happen, and he really hoped that this was all just a very bad dream. Of course, he knew better, and that was the end of that, but it just all seemed very ironic and cruel and satirical.

And he was about to shut his eyes when there was a fierce clanging and Meizu flew sideways.

Sasuke lunged forward with Naruto's abandoned piece of metal, and Gozu cursed, swinging to hit him with the gun. Sasuke deflected it, spinning and clipping him on the side of the head – Gozu stumbled and hit the side of the doorframe to the closet.

Meizu jumped up, moving to defend his brother, but Sasuke was on him much faster, wielding the connecter like he was some sort of samurai, and clubbing him in the stomach. Naruto blinked and it was done, Meizu tripping over his own momentum onto the floor, halfway into the lockers which squealed uncomfortably as he fell into them. And as Gozu was up, he knocked the gun from his hand and whipped – metal swooshing through the air – his legs out from under him, so that he half-flew, half-somersaulted into his brother.

And then there were two very sharp bangs and it was over. Both brothers lay very still and Sasuke stood over them, silent as water and twice as regal and Naruto simply stared because he could not contemplate what had just transpired.

His head spun – his vision whirling – and he felt sick to his stomach. (He had been prepared to die, just then.) He couldn't take his eyes from Sasuke couldn't stop watching his back, couldn't bring himself to part with the sight and the way it collected itself and overwhelmed him. The contrast of the school uniform and the Uchiha's ivory skin and ebony hair was so distracting, especially when one felt as if they were on the inside of a kaleidoscope, and Naruto did, and the hall twisted and spun. His heart was pounding and ringing in his ears, throbbing in his chest, and he hadn't noticed it until that moment.

He was still propped awkwardly against the lockers, and he could feel the kink in his neck as it developed and he paid it a dazed sort of attention that was dizzy. He himself was feeling nauseous with barely-assuaged fear, barely avoided disaster, and he was almost overtaken by his own criticism – _how could you have gotten so weak? How dare you be so powerless?_ – and by his awe. (By his consternation.) Maybe Sasuke really could handle himself, not that Naruto felt like testing it any further by letting him wander off on his own again. His shoulders and fingers ached painfully and he wondered, with some idleness, whether or not _this_ was a dream, and whether death really was like sleeping only a bit different.

He shuddered, blinked, and finally sagged into a position where he was not half upright, and instead was lying almost completely on his back. (He could not remember how he'd fallen into this position, but he shuddered again and his blood coursed with ice – cold terror that was not really feeling.) His eyes rolled a little and as he felt them do so he felt swollen, a not-far belated urge to spit up the contents of his stomach.

An all-too-familiar voice rolled to him from across the linoleum.

"Don't faint, you scaredy cat."

Naruto choked on something and was gone.

* * *

He coughed loudly as Sasuke hit him in the side and he was back again. His world rolled back into focus and the first thing he really noticed was- 

"Oh _fuck_, my head…"

He grabbed at it, and clenched his fingers over the spots that stung the most, because heat indicated that that was where he was bleeding from. It was tender, bruised, and he could feel it swelling, blackening, under his fingers, and it aggravated him. His ears still rung loudly, a fearsome buzzing, and his heart was thudding against them, as well as his stomach, his fingers, and his neck. (Blood was rushing everywhere, driven everywhere by the heart that had been stopped for too long by the irrational fear.)

"I told you."

"Shut up." He shouldn't really have said such a thing to a student but at the moment he didn't really care. It was Sasuke and Sasuke had made it clear that he expected to be treated differently and if he wanted it so badly then dammit all- "How long was I-"

"Less than fifteen seconds. But we should move. One of the weapons discharged right after you-"

"What did you do to make it _discharge_?!"

"One of them was still awake."

Naruto swore rather loudly, drawing a thumb across his lips in a frustrated movement, and he watched the brothers, noticing that one of them (Gozu) was now lying several feet from the other, and seemed to be wheezing, his eyes glassy and wide open. "You hit him in the _windpipe_?"

"Nowhere else to hit him." Sasuke said it simply, watching him. Naruto swore again, picking himself up with difficulty. His legs were shaking and so as soon as he was half upright he lifted his wrist to his mouth and bit it rather hard, pinching the skin between his sharp teeth and trying to get a better hold on his body and whatever the hell had just happened.

He let himself fall against the lockers after a second, taking the time to breath, and laying his focus on calming his breaths so that they did not make his chest heave, and letting his arms lay against the cool metal so that they would know that something in the world was still solid. He shuddered again, and tried to choke on it. He listened to the thud of his heart and tried to pick up a pattern. _In…out…in…out. You're a person, not a fish._

"Weren't you listening?" Sasuke's daintiness was slowly being replaced by irritation. "We need to _move_."

"_Give me another fifteen seconds, you fucking bastard._"

Sasuke looked long at him before sighing and turning to look over the damage he'd done, seeming as if – rather than being proud of it – he had absolutely no opinion over what had just transpired. Naruto took time to get his breath back, counting the seconds and inhaling and exhaling to a very slow calming rhythm and the room _finally_ stopped spinning. He shuddered one last time, resisted the urge to vomit just for the hell of it, and stood up, away from the lockers. Sasuke turned to him and raised an eyebrow. Naruto was torn between hitting him and asking him how he could stand to look so cold, but figured that his mother had been right when she said that if you make faces, your face would get stuck that way.

He exhaled in what was almost a sigh, looked up and down the corridor and turned back to him. "Are you understanding me now?"

"About what?" Sasuke smirked at him easily. "About how I don't need your protection?"

Naruto scowled. "They caught me off guard."

Sasuke scoffed. "As if that should be a problem."

"You had the upper hand in attacking them. Don't give me that bullshit."

"That bullshit's what just saved your _hide_, you dumbass."

Naruto's face bunched uncomfortably. Knowing that that much was true was going to make him rip his own insides out. He _had_ been caught completely off guard – and maybe yelling wasn't the best tactic to staying hidden for a long period of time – but being as experienced as he was it shouldn't have gotten to him. But then, with Yohko, he had at least been insured that (were anything to happen, and it always did) she would be able to defend herself, so that neither of them sustained major injury, or got the other shot. There was no way he could've known that Sasuke had that same potential.

There was something about that that struck up weird chords in his stomach, like some ringing piece of mercury across a slab of thin plastic, and made him wonder how Sasuke had learned that, and where he had developed into this silent, emotionless fighter.

Naruto sighed again. "I need to-"

"If you're going to say anything about going back to our classroom," Sasuke said blandly, "I told you: it's already locked."

Naruto moved his head and swore, hissing through his teeth at the unfrozen and sloshy ache at his temples. "I can't have you wandering around, you idiot."

"You're one to be calling names."

"I'm not going to have you-"

"And while I'm sitting in class – assuming you get me there as you'd like – what, exactly, would _you_ be doing? Because, if _you're_ just going to keep wandering around the halls, I'm tempted to call you ill-equipped from a mental standpoint."

"God_dammit_, Sasuke!"

"Don't yell at me." The boy scowled. "You'll get more of them after us."

Naruto reached up, pinching his temples, and gritting his teeth. He couldn't think _how_ they would've locked the door, and _supposed_ he was glad about it, but it put him in a very difficult position. It meant that there was no way he could dump Sasuke and then run off to the office to save Inari from who knew how many heavily armed captors, and he was deeply frustrated.

"Look," he said finally, squaring himself. "I'm not taking you with me."

"And where are you headed, anyway, with your unnecessarily oversized package of misguided justice?" Sasuke watched him skeptically, the metal rod thrown haphazardly back across his shoulders. He looked as if he would rather be filing his nails than inquiring as to Naruto's endeavor, and the boredom that laced it made the blonde want to hit him quite badly, but his headache reminded him that he was not in much of a position to do so, and so he grit his teeth bitterly behind his lips, which were thin with tension.

"That doesn't concern you."

"Ah, yes." Sasuke rolled his eyes. "I forgot. Silly me. I'll rephrase that. Where are you headed that I am not allowed to go because I am utterly defenseless and unable to protect myself, so unlike you, sensei?"

Naruto grimaced and spat venom from his eyes. (The blue in them bit in a super-heated fashion, and smoldered white hot, like offended coals.) "I'm not taking you with me, Uchiha – not if you _paid_ me – and you aren't going to _bug me_ into doing it."

"If I irritate you," the raven said, straight-faced, "that's your business, not mine. I asked where you were going, not what you think of me in this particular moment, and I believe that – having just saved the both of us – I'm entitled to an answer."

"I don't care if you think you're entitled to the bloody _crown of England_. I'm not obligated to tell you _anything_."

Sasuke smirked at him. "Afraid I'll show you up if I tag along?"

And Naruto couldn't help it.

He laughed at him. He let his head drop back, and he laughed at him.

It was a horrible laugh, more a cough of bitterness than anything else – it was sad and empty and dry as Sahara desert sands. It was like broken glass in a bed of flowers, and it was terrible in the way you knew it had been pretty once. It made the mocking expression drop from Sasuke's face quicker than anything, and his eyes went smoky and choked with it. It was a mouth-opened-wide laugh, a laugh that should've been based on something that was amusing, rather than operating as a substitute for misery.

Naruto didn't cover it up and he didn't put it behind his hands and he didn't stifle it. It was open and it was sore and it was horrible, and he laughed at the way Sasuke was so confident, having seen nothing of life, really knowing nothing of the world. _You don't know me. You don't know anything about me._

He stemmed it easily and spoke. "I'm afraid of a lot of things. That?" He half-scoffed, half-something-like-chuckled. "I'm not afraid of that. It's not like I'm fourteen, you know. It's not like impressing me is going to make me like you, make me trust you, or somehow change or alter the way I deal with you."

He pushed himself up from the floor, standing up to his full height and being glad for the extra seven-and-a-half-or-so inches he had over Sasuke. It was nice to be able to _physically_ reinstate his seniority, as such, even if it had thus far proven hard for him to compensate for Sasuke's intricate knowledge of things. Sometimes, it was enough just for Naruto to know he was the taller of the two of them, that there were some ways that Sasuke had yet to surpass him.

"I'm taking you back to the classroom," he said, having suddenly regained himself, "and you're going to stay there, and it's not a choice and I don't want to know about any opinions you have on it."

(It would've been strange to see him then, with his stern voice and bent spine.)

* * *

They walked together in almost utter silence, staying close to one another out of necessity. Naruto's incessant jumpiness had faded into a constant suspicion of everything and his eyes darted about, finding evil where there was none. After he had shot out of the way of the seventh locker in a row, and torn his gaze away from yet another dark corner, Sasuke elbowed him sharply. 

"Will you cut it out? You're pissing me off."

"Big deal," Naruto snapped, glaring at him irritably.

"Idiot." Sasuke frowned at him deeply. "If we're _quiet_, we'll hear them before they were us. Otherwise-"

"Sasuke? I'm going to tell you this once and I will praise all Heaven if it's the only order I give you that you ever obey - _shut the hell up._"

He turned away from him then, grabbing Sasuke's sleeve with one hand and putting another against the white outcropping of the next turn they were to make, checking the halls for movement. He stopped for a good six seconds, making sure they were alone before noticing that Sasuke hadn't prevented himself from running up against his back this time, and the warmth was severely disconcerting. A bit startled, he leapt away from it swiftly, whipping around to glare at him.

Sasuke folded his arms and raised an eyebrow.

Naruto hissed at him, yelling in a whisper. "What the _hell_ is your problem?!"

"You're the one who yanked me over."

"God, you are such a-"

"What are those, anyway?"

"What?" Naruto's face flexed, morphing away from anger.

"Those."

Naruto wrinkled his nose, cocking the eyebrow opposite the one Sasuke had. He folded his arms, looking straight at him, a 'what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about' expression worn plainly on his cheeks. The boy in front of him released an exasperated sigh that seemed very long pent up, and came forward, which made him take a few (very guilty) steps backwards.

"What are you doing?!"

"Hold _still,_ you idiot!"

He hit the wall with his back and Sasuke reached for him and he prepared for the worst, fists bunching-

Sasuke pressed his thumbs into his cheeks. "_Those._"

Naruto froze, blinking.

_Oh._

He pushed Sasuke off of him (a little more gently than he'd meant to – he practically _eased_ the boy away) and then reached up with both hands, touching at his face, and finding that his left side was peeling away. He swore to himself, scraping his nails against it accidentally. He looked over what had collected beneath them before irritatedly scrubbing the gunk away with his other hand. He glanced around, and found a telltale silver glint leaning out of another unclosed locker. (They were everywhere – the open lockers, signs of messily collected students who had been late to class. Ibiki certainly knew how to do his job, which was mildly comforting. He had no idea how Sasuke could've evaded him.)

He opened it a bit wider, peering into the mirror of a girl with a few obvious vanity issue and an interesting obsession with British actress Keira Knightley. He swore again, seeing that it wasn't just a faded likeness that showed through – the blow he'd been delivered had been enough to take off a significant amount of his make up, and two hard outlines showed through what was left on his left cheek. The third was soft, subdued, but he could still see it. He sighed, looking at himself and feeling lobsided, as if his head were tipping due to some substantial weight that had fixated itself behind his left ear. After a moment's hesitation he finally figured he'd get it over with, and reached up, taking advantage of the itch (which distracted him from the fact that this was a really, _really_ stupid thing to be doing right now) and scratching the rest of it off, doing the same on his other side, and suddenly the air was on them in a way it hadn't been in years.

He rubbed the excess foundation away and his 'whiskers' stared back at him. He faced them blankly, thinking that they gave his eyes that haunted sort of look (and knowing why), and he reached up pushing his bangs out of the way. (They were stiff, as if they had dried to his forehead while he was sweating.)

"So what are they?" Sasuke had come over to peer into the mirror with him, and he now watched interestedly from over his shoulder.

"Nothing." Naruto said it a bit too hurriedly for it to be taken truthfully even if you had absolute faith in all human kind.

Sasuke, obviously having no faith in human kind whatsoever, scoffed immediately. "Right."

"They're nothing."

"Okay. I mean, that's fine – lots of men wear that much makeup for no reason."

"Sasuke, shut up." Naruto closed the locker, turning away from it (as his fingertips left it, they left whispered trails of empathetic worry – '_I hope you're alright,'_ to the student with the mirror.) Sasuke tailed him doggedly.

"What _are_ they?"

"Sasuke, do you purposely choose to distract yourself like this whenever you're stressed?"

The question seemed to catch the boy a little off his guard, which was good, because it gave Naruto time to the think of better questions to ask him if he digressed from this one and came back to the subject of Naruto's _cheeks._

"No."

"Oh, okay, because why I wear makeup seems to be a very weird thing to ask at this point in time."

"Because the fact that you wear makeup-"

"It shouldn't be your primary _concern_ right now."

They came to the next corner and Naruto threw his arm out, stopping Sasuke so he wouldn't pass him up. Sasuke stopped and they checked for the corridor's security, heads moving back and forth in opposite sync so that one moment they faced apart and the other they looked straight at one another. Naruto's eyebrows creased with some emotion that he could not identify and he moved away, around the corner, feeling disconcerted by the closeness between their bodies.

He didn't get far though – Sasuke grabbed his right arm.

"When did you get them?"

He whipped around, then, throwing his hand off to the side.

(He'd had enough.)

"Sasuke, do you ever consider that _maybe_ I don't feel like bearing every secret I've ever had to you? Do you understand that I don't even like you knowing I _have _secrets? Do you understand how fucking difficult you make it for me to just live my fucking life in _peace_?!"

"Isn't it your _job_ to answer questions?" Sasuke had a newly-sour expression on his face, like he'd just swallowed a live frog. "You employ yourself as a teacher and you preach," he gesticulated, pointedly stabbing his finger into Naruto's chest, "and preach," another forceful prod to his pectorals, "and _preach_," punctuating Sasuke's speech, "but I haven't learned anything worth learning yet."

"Well then maybe you aren't taking your education _seriously_."

"I'm fifteen," Sasuke spat, "and there is no one on this _earth_ who would be able to convince me to take my education seriously."

"I don't doubt that," the blonde snapped, anger making his voice crack, "seeing as I can't even convince you to take _me_ seriously."

Naruto's own venom hung unwavering in the air between them, and Sasuke stared through it at him.

"How _can I_ take you seriously? All you've done so far is avoid me."

"That _surprises you_?!"

Sasuke's expression deepened into one of enormous distaste, but Naruto cut him off before he could respond.

"I'm fucking _tired of you_, Sasuke! I'm fucking _tired_ of having you _harass me_ all the time! Don't you have anything better to do with your life?!"

"No."

The bland answer made him blink.

"What?"

"No," the Uchiha said flatly, staring straight at him. "I don't."

Naruto only hesitated twelve seconds before smacking him across the face, the impact of hand against cheek echoing sharply down and across the hall. (That was the second time he'd felt the need to do that. Twice was too often. Twice was-)

"Then _get a fucking hobby_." The words were bitter and biting, and stung at both them like cold salt water. (But Naruto hadn't visited the ocean in a long time.) He glared at him heatedly, eyes blazingly their bright, untamable cerulean, jaw tight with anger. He watched as Sasuke once again put his hand to his cheek as if to test that it was still solid, seeming critical but not overly upset about it. He almost seemed like he'd become accustomed to the sensation.

The boy finally shrugged in a way that irked Naruto greatly.

"Whatever."

Naruto opened his mouth to say something but froze, instead.

There it was again – that mind numbingly-cold sensation that shot down his spine. He spun around, ears straining, eyes flicking from side to side nervously.

"What is it?" Sasuke's words behind him were careful.

Naruto reached back and instinctively took hold of his student's arm again. (He was not surprised to find that the boy had actually held it out for him this time, knowing that he would take hold of it. That, in fact, didn't really register until quite a long time afterwards.) He shook his head silently, pulling him back into the wall stealthily, hiding again in the provided space between a door and the rows of lockers.

Within seconds two men had rounded the corner, speaking snidely to one another and walking side-by-side, and Naruto's hold on Sasuke's forearm tightened to a vicegrip.

"—believe he'd do 'im like that!" The first man was burly with a bare, toned chest, dark unruly tufts of hair and a patch slung across his right eye. His voice was deep and gravelly and it made Naruto's hair stand on end. The man who accompanied him looked to be in his twenties – he wore a beany low over his platinum blonde hair and pale face, which was streaked with black war paint – and walked with his gun at his hip, side-by-side with his partner, his own voice thin and reedy.

"Meh. The dead 're dead – no use working yourself up about it."

"Who's worked up? 'm just sayin'. That Zabuza guy? We can't trust 'im."

Naruto listened, ears almost visibly twitching at the mention of his friend's name.

"Yeah, Doll Face either – I hear yuh."

Anger course through him momentarily, and Naruto almost caught himself being defensive on their part.

"Gatou better let us ditch 'em soon."

"Maybe just one. I kin'a like Doll Face."

A hearty laugh from the bigger one and they came directly into their line of vision. Naruto's eyes flashed with a protective valor, and he bit deep into the flesh of his lower lip, smashing one in the back of the neck with his elbow, and knocking the other over with a punch delivered to his jaw, feeling the bone fracture beneath his fist.

_Don't you dare talk about them like that._

"Holy-"

The ground seemed to move beneath the four of them as the smaller one half-sat up looking startled. Naruto grabbed him up and kneed him in the face. The other picked himself up, only to be slammed by his oncoming partner as Naruto hurled him away. The two collided with the wall and Naruto stood over, folding his arms across his chest.

Sasuke came forward slowly and stopped by his hip. "…where'd you learn that?"

"I'd ask the same of your mad Kendo skills, yuh lousy sonovabitch." Naruto glared at him but it was more bored than anything else – his exterior seemed to almost be coated with a thin layer of ice that glinted calmly in the lighting. (It was something he was used to – Naruto was mean when he fought, because the fire that coated his insides wouldn't stand for anything else. Shizune had told Tsunade, after the Falling Out, that Naruto and Yohko both had severe anger management problems that they might want to get examined. But Naruto hated examinations with a fucking _passion._)

Sasuke shrugged. "Gotta have a hobby."

"You're such an asshole."

"B-bastards…" The two felled men scowled at them through their newly earned bruises, and bloody mouths. The little one looked to be suffering a minor concussion, his head having connected and left an angry red mark along the wall.

Naruto tutted softly, kicking the one nearest him in the stomach with vigor. "Nope. I'm pretty sure you've got that wrong." He stuck out his tongue at length. "We're the good guys, remember? You're getting what's coming to yuh. 'S bad karma, yuh know? Shootin' up high schools."

They both shuddered and groaned at the blow, and Naruto's expression contorted, turning into a makeshift, toothy grin.

"Now, I'm gunna ask you a few very simple questions, and you're going to answer me and hope that my friends on the Konoha Police Squad are nice to you when they get here."

"Shit." The smaller one's expression twisted venomously, bruises blooming across his neck and exposed collarbone. "_You're_ the Uzumaki kid…?"

"Aw." Naruto pressed his hand to his chest in mock compassion. "Did he tell you to shoot me on sight?" He put a foot out, stepping down sharply on the larger one's gun just before his fingers touched it, and kicking it behind him. "Too bad it's been _years_ since Gatou saw me – bastard never was too good at math. Puts the two of _you_ in a pretty precarious situation, huh?"

"We're not telling you anything."

"Cute."

Sasuke stooped for a second, grabbing at the floor – Naruto paid him no real mind.

"You'll have to beat it out of us."

Naruto put his hands to his hips, shrugging his shoulders haplessly. "Unfortunately, torture's not really my thing." _Been on the receiving end a little too often._ He shook his head making a sympathetic expression at them. "I'm just gunna needja to tell me."

"What makes you think we'd tell you?"

Sasuke stepped forward then, gun in hand.

"The fact that you'll otherwise be on the receiving end of my own sad lack of conscience should suffice."

Naruto looked to his student skeptically, and then back at the villains and nodding blankly.

_So bloody cocksure. Little fucker._

Not that it wasn't somewhat beneficial at the moment.

"Yeah. That, and the fact that I have three lawyers on my speed dial that would eat that 'self defense' thing right up."

The two floor-bound gunman looked up at them, seeming reluctantly subdued, and the smaller of the two chewed his lower lip in frustration, a soft string of uttered curses flowing unsteadily from his mouth.

_Step One: Defeat opponent._

Naruto smiled at them brightly, seeming sadistic in the way he did so.

"Got it?"

They glared at him sourly. His grin widened.

"So," he said, tone completely unbusiness-like. "Got names, perchance?"

_Step Two: Assess compliance._

They said nothing. He tutted again, tongue thrumming lightly against the backs of his teeth.

"I could just call yuh Thing 1 and Thing 2."

"Waraji," the larger one said at last. "And Zori."

Naruto raised an eyebrow, thinking that he had probably heard more creative names for bar whores. Thing 1 and Thing 2 suited them a lot better – not that they were half as funny. (Naruto had always had that secretly passionate love for Dr. Seuss, even if the man would've been racially opposed to his ethnic background. Naruto couldn't really help it. They were good books, whether or not the author liked his kind of people.)

"We're just here on orders," the reedy one bit out.

"No way anyone would ever train you to say anything other that that." Naruto stared him down. The bigger one snarled irritably. Naruto overlooked him with a quite, unsubtle ease that was uncanny.

_Step Three: Interrogate 'em for all they're worth and more._

"Waraji-san," he said, words measured calmly as he watched the man's snarl twitch a little at the use of his name, "I assume the two of you are taking orders directly from Gatou? Bodyguards. Makes you pretty special." He smiled widely. "Close enough to tell me what I want to know and dumb enough for Gatou to think of both of you as disposable. I see he hasn't dealt with change too well."

"Shut your mouth!"

The smaller one who had spoken, Zori by default, seemed to cower behind his partner, shrinking back when Naruto's eyes turned on him, burning cold and savagely.

"Not until you make me. You know that's the rule with things like this." Naruto tilted his head in a way that was almost mechanically shrewd. Sasuke stood at his shoulder, holding the gun levelly in the thugs' faces. "Now – I believe you were the two most likely in charge of the kidnapping of my _nephew._" His face darkened, but he kept it from delving into itself, feeling like he was steeling himself, as if he were made of sheet metal. "Anything you have to say to the contrary?"

The two stared back at him, but once again, Zori's gaze faltered revealingly.

"Nothing? Really? Well," Naruto said, frown twisting down almost cruelly, "that's a pity. Yuh see, I understand your loyalty to your boss, your respect for him – believe me, I do – but I've got to say the chances of him returning it is pretty low, especially once I've put _holes_ in those pretty faces of yours."

Waraji saved Zori the humiliation of speaking. "What do you want to know?"

"Who's in the office with him?"

"Zabuza and…" Waraji's lip twitched. "…that one kid."

"Doll Face," Zori said simply.

"Haku." Naruto's voice was a deadly, cutting soft.

Waraji swallowed, then nodded gruffly. "Right."

"What weapons do they have?"

"I don't know." Waraji gave him a flighty look.

"What _weapons _do they have?"

"The normal kind. I don't know."

"What _weapons_?" Naruto stepped forward loudly.

"I don't _know_! Ones like ours!"

"Ones like _yours_?" Naruto's question lay flat, like some sort of python.

"Yeah."

"What are your time constraints?"

"Gatou told us to take as much time as we needed."

"To flush me out?"

"To flush outcher friends."

"The guardian police agents?"

"Right."

"Who's the primary target?"

"Ain't none."

"_Who_ is the _primary target_?"

"Hatake Kakashi."

Naruto watched them then, arms folded tightly, and made to consider the information at length. It all measured up which was sort of what he'd been afraid it would do, and he drummed his fingers against his elbow thinking that nothing today was unfolding very normally. _But isn't that the way…?_ He sighed, eyes closing for a second before he reached across his own body and snatched the gun from Sasuke's grasp. The boy let out a disgruntled sound, but Naruto was quick and stepped forward, clocking both men in the temple with the butt of it.

"Sorry. I left him at home today."

They thudded to the floor with pained groans.

"Just your good luck, I guess." He looked them over, and gave the fallen Waraji a quick kick to the side. "I've got other friends around this place who'll lock you up just as fast, but Kakashi probably would've killed yuh."

He thought, briefly, that if he were one to judge, it might be better luck than they deserved. But he _wasn't_ one to judge, and it wasn't really his place to do anything about it, so he sighed, shoved the gun unceremoniously into his back pocket, and glanced at Sasuke who stood up, having taken Zori's gun from the floor.

He sighed, feeling as though the adrenaline were rushing from the pores of his face, feeling _drained_, as if he were coming back from a different dimensional plane.

"You're not coming with me."

Sasuke glared back at him. "I think we established the invalidation of that argument a while ago."

"No, Sasuke. We didn't." The blonde made a point of barring his student's path, putting his hands on his hips.

"What do you want me to _do_? Walk back to the _classroom_? That _was_ the entire point of this side-venture of yours. But you still don't have any real idea what you're going to do with me when we get there. The doors are locked and your oh-so-doggedly-loyal students have locked both of us out and aren't letting anyone in on pain of death, in perfect accordance to _your _instruction." Sasuke's jaw was tight and he looked angry, his obsidian eyes glinting darkly. "I don't know if you've thought about it, but there's no way you're going to be able to take down _two_ heads of an operation on your own."

Naruto's lips tightened and thinned.

Sasuke's glare intensified. "Don't give me bullshit. That kind of thing only happens in video games where getting shot doesn't actually kill you. Don't _give me_ that bullshit."

"Sasuke." Naruto's voice had morphed again into a low, ominous growl. "If you'd ever shot another person in your life, you'd know that there are plenty of ways to get shot and not _die_."

The boy scoffed. "And of _course_ you'd know from experience."

"It's rare I speak from anything else."

Sasuke stared at him and Naruto raised his eyebrows for emphasis.

"There's a lot that you don't know about me, Uchiha. Don't give yourself too much credit."

"I only give myself credit I earn." The boy had gone somber again, but his arms were still folded.

"That makes two of us."

"I'm going with you."

"You're _not_."

"You need _somebody_ in there with you."

"No I d-"

"Somebody who's going to think about having our _backs_ rather than retrieving your _nephew_."

Naruto stopped where he had been cut off. The Uchiha took the opportunity to continue.

"Look. You're in all this for the sole reason of getting him back. Noble a cause as that _is_ it's going to make you far more vulnerable than you would be even if you were going in without a _gun_. They've got better firepower, they've one-upped you as far as _man_power, _and_ they've got a shield. If you go in there alone you're doing _exactly_ what they expect you to do. If you go in there with one of your _friends_…" He paused to glance back down the corridor, and Naruto had a feeling he would be hearing countless questions on the subject later "…they'll have similar objectives to yours and everything will get tangled and weighed down further. Either way, the likelihood that your precious nephew gets shot just gets higher and higher.

"Whereas," Sasuke said seriously, "you won't have any of those problems bringing me along."

Naruto exploded.

"Of course not! I'll have even _bigger ones_! You'll be a _liability_, Sasuke! It'll be like bringing them _another hostage_! If they aim a gun at you, what do you expect me to do? _Ignore it and let them blow your head off_? If I was going alone, it wouldn't be a problem – I don't care if I get shot, because it won't stop me doing what I need to. I know that my _friends_ can defend themselves to a degree where they can take care of themselves. I am _responsible_ for you, Sasuke. _Responsible_! And there is no way in Heaven or Hell that I'm letting you come along with me! That's called _reckless endangerment_, and there's a _reason_ it's illegal!"

"I'm perfectly capable of defending myself!"

"That doesn't mean you're not _equally_ capable of getting _killed_!"

There was a long silence between the two of them where they stood still and stared one another down.

Sasuke spoke then, softly.

"I swore an oath to my mother…that I wouldn't die before I killed the person who murdered her."

Naruto stared at him, blinking, but Sasuke spoke again before he could think of something intelligent to reply with.

"That's the best I can give you."

"I- Sasuke." Naruto finally climbed back into his own mouth and shook his head firmly. "The world doesn't…no. I'm- I'm sorry about your mother. I am. But…that doesn't-"

Sasuke stepped forward.

"It's better than going in alone."

Naruto stood still and watched him.

Anxiety bunched rebelliously underneath his skin but he made no move to quash it.

"Sasuke. No."

"Sensei."

Naruto blinked, taken offguard again.

"Please."

* * *

Naruto cocked his gun low, by his thigh, and a loud metallic click resonated through the hallway, bouncing off of metal doors and flat linoleum tile. He watched the space of floor leading to the office carefully and found it empty, much to his relief. (He was in no mood to deal with any _other_ obstacles.) He took one hand and pressed it to the wall, thinking for a second. Sasuke hovered over his right shoulder. 

"If there's nothing there, we should go in."

"They'll know it's us."

"The chance that they'll _already_ know it's us is pretty high."

Naruto raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'm serious. They'll atleast know that something's _up_. Their other associates would probably phone in before coming back, seeing that they're supposedly staking out the classrooms."

Naruto sighed and turned back to their target. "Yeah. I guess you're right."

Sasuke snorted. "You say that _so reluctantly._"

"You're lucky I say it at all."

Sasuke cocked his gun behind him and the sound sent a shiver up Naruto's spine.

"You have to go in sometime."

"…yeah. I know." Naruto looked at him seriously over his shoulder, studying the boy behind him more scrupulously than he had in previous minutes, taking in what needed to be taken in and taking it in studiously, just incase.

"Don't-" Naruto stopped himself saying something pessimistic, knowing that that wasn't the best thing to be falling back on just now. (The "don't die" sentiment was something he had used too often a long time ago, and it wasn't good luck to use it now, in his mind.) "Be careful."

Sasuke nodded curtly. "Let's just go, scaredycat."

Naruto bristled slightly at the nickname but didn't comment on it. Instead he took his hand back from the wall, pushing off the balls of his feet, and walking swiftly to the thick oak doors of the office and throwing them open with a bang, Sasuke at his side.

The air was both still and heavy where it hung around them, and Naruto's stomach twisted painfully.

The headmaster lay unconscious on the lush carpet, and various paper folders and documents were strewn about in a chaotic flurry. The room was darkened by the deep red curtains around his large, pale windows, which were dusty and crusted with age; a thin slice of gray fog-ridden sky showed between them. The office was dimly lit and crowded with expensive looking furniture which look jostled and thrown-about, and in the center of the reckage-

"Your nephew, I presume."

Inari was bound, his arms and legs roped together with a thick, greasy looking section of rag, his mouth duct-taped shut. Naruto's teeth gripped his lower lip immediately and he wanted nothing more than to surge forward and wrap him up in his arms and take him home. But, as Sasuke moved to do so, he threw his arm out to stop him. The boy opened his mouth to protest, and Inari let out a muffled cry as if he were trying to talk to them through the tape, but Naruto shook his head, glaring into the corner of the room.

"You never leave a hostage unattended."

The glinting gun he had noticed from the beginning emerged then from behind one of the thick red curtains that hung around the high windows, attached to a lithe hand and a pale body.

"Very good, Naruto-sensei."

Haku stood affront them, clothed in a simple combination of a dark cloak and white pants, hair up in a high bun and face covered with stylized Nō mask that showed only his deep brown eyes. Naruto recognized his voice, though – it was impossible to miss – and recognized his nails, painted a deep chocolate that was lovely and matched with his thin, crème-colored skin.

Naruto kept his own weapon down and Sasuke looked sour.

"Missed you in class today, Haku." His voice sounded tired, even to him.

"I wish you had stayed there, sensei."

Naruto nodded and brought his arm up, gun held at the wall and fired.

_**BANG!**_

The bullet struck the solid plaster and clattered with a muffled metallic clicking to the carpet. He saw Sasuke flinch slightly out of the corner of his eye, and sighed again.

"Get outta the shadows, Zabuza."

His friend laughed, emerging from them in a way that made him seem like he was some sort of creature spun from spider webs and smoke. His hands were covered in thick gloves and on emergence, he took a bulky-looking assault rifle down and across his arms from where it had been slung across his back. He cocked it once, and Naruto retorted by cocking his own once more.

"Missed yuh and yer pistol fetish, Uzumaki."

"They've stayed faithful tuh me thus far," Naruto said, tone light but all-business.

"Pity not to see yuh with two."

"Missin' the glory days, Momoichi?"

"Not a bit." Zabuza smirked and peered and Sasuke, who drew his weapon too. "And this must be the pretty little student of yours I've heard so much about."

Sasuke smirked back at him fearlessly. "And you'll be lucky to hear anything more."

Zabuza chuckled. "Always did like 'em cocky, huh Uzumaki?"

Naruto remained expressionless. "Sasuke, stay trained on Haku." His student scoffed again but reaimed more appropriately. "What's the point of this, Zabuza?"

"Don't know if there is one. I'd be damned if I thought yuh had it in yuh to stomach holdin' a gun again."

Naruto smirked bitterly. "You should feel _honored._"

Zabuza smirked back. "And I do. And twice as honored tuh get to see the famous Uchiha Sasuke yer so enamored with. Knew he had tuh be somethin' else to catch _yer_ interest. 'S a pity yer so adamant about not fuckin' 'im cuz-"

_**BANG!**_

Naruto's second shot whizzed past Zabuza's ear and clipped the wall again.

"F'you don't stop talking I'm going to stop missing on purpose."

Zabuza smiled wickedly, raising his gun.

"_Bring it on, Uzumaki._"

* * *

**End Chapter 11**

**IT'S DONE IT'S DONE IT'S DONE IT'S DONE IT'S DONE. CELEBRATION. _CELEBRATIONNNNN._** I AM SO DEAD TIMES ∞. **_THAT WAS SO INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT YOU HAVE NO IDEA._**

_**I AM SO SORRY FOR BEING LAME.**_

-FAINTS-

I am so exhausted now. That took _forever_ and I _know_ it took forever and I just…I've really wanted to make the wait worth it. So, twenty-five pages and at _least_ six months later, here it is. Chapter 11.. That "LET'S PUT LAMB THROUGH HELL" chapter of **doom**, and it's finally finished. (THERE IS A GOD.) I have no idea what made this all so incredibly difficult to write and I can't guarantee that the next one will come any easier, but I **promise** that the chapters will never ever ever ever _ever_ take this long ever again.

I just really REALLY want to thank everyone who's stuck with me for sticking with me. -cries- (FAN BASE. WHAT FAN BASE.) The steadily incoming comments were just…gah. They were just so helpful and wonderful and…really _really _kept me going. All those times (and there were _a lot_ of them) when I hadn't opened the Word document for weeks and thought to myself "Jeez, what's the _use_?", they just helped me power through in a way that nothing else could've possibly done. Thankyou so so much for your support.

I really hope that this was worth it.

(TIME TO START ON CHAPTER 12. -WHIPS SELF-)

--_Lady Lamb_


End file.
